
Qass_ 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



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I 






BEFORE THE WAR 



BEFORE THE WAR 



BY 

VISCOUNT HALDANE 




HE 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 

New York and London 

1920 



UA47 

.2 
M 



Copyright, 1920, by Funk & Wagnalla Company 
[Printed in the United States of America] 



Published in February, 1920 



1 320 



Copyright under the Articles of the Copyright Convention of the Pan-AmericaniRepublics 
of the United States, August 11, 1910 



A55S830 



PREFATORY NOTE 

The chapters of which this little volume consists 
were constructed with a definite purpose. It was 
to render clear the line of thought and action 
followed by the Government of this country before 
the war, between January, 1906, and August, 
1914. The endeavor made was directed in the 
first place to averting war, and in the second place 
to preparing for it as well as was practicable if it 
should come. In reviewing what happened I have 
made use of the substance of various papers 
recently contributed to the Westminster Gazette, 
the Atlantic Monthly, Land and Water, and the 
Sunday Times. The gist of these, which were 
written with their inclusion in this book in view, 
has been incorporated in the text together with 
other material. I have to thank the Editors of 
these journals for their courtesy in agreeing that 
the substance of what they published should be 
made use of here as part of a connected whole. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Introduction ..... 13 

Diplomacy Before the War . . 35 

The German Attitude Before the War 101 

The Military Preparations . ; 177 

Epilog 207 

Index 227 



vu 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Viscount Haldane . . . Frontispiece 

Count Metternich . Facing page 57 

M. Paul Cambon 78 

Viscount Grey (Sir Edward Grey) . 87 
Chancellor yon Bethmann-Hollweg . 101 
Admiral von Tirpitz .... 137 
Count Berchtold ..... 153 
Count Ottokar Czernin . . .170 



IX 



INTRODUCTION 



BEFORE THE WAR 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

The purpose of the pages which follow is, as I 
have said in the Prefatory Note, to explain the 
policy pursued toward Germany by Great Britain 
through the eight years which immediately pre- 
ceded the great war of 1914. It was a policy which 
had two branches, as inseparable as they were 
distinct. The preservation of peace, by removing 
difficulties and getting rid of misinterpretations, 
was the object of the first branch. The second 
branch was concerned with what might happen if 
we failed in our effort to avert war. Against any 
outbreak by which such failure might be followed 
we had to insure. The form of the insurance had 
to be one which, in our circumstances, was prac- 
ticable, and care had to be taken that it was not 
of a character that would frustrate the main pur- 
pose by provoking, and possibly accelerating, the 
very calamity against which it was designed to 
provide. 

The situation was delicate and difficult. The 

13 



Before the War 

public most properly expected of British Ministers 
that they should spare no effort for peace and for 
security. It was too sensible to ask for every detail 
of the steps taken for the attainment of this end. 
There are matters on which it is mischievous to en- 
courage discussion, even in Parliament. Members 
of Parliament know this well, and are sensible 
about it. The wisest among them do not press for 
open statements which if made to the world would 
imperil the very object which Parliament and the 
public have directed those responsible to them to 
seek to attain. What is objected to in secret 
diplomacy hardly includes that which from its very 
nature must be negotiated in the first instance 
between individuals. 

The policy actually followed was in principle 
satisfactory to the great majority of our people. 
To them it was familiar in its general outlines. 
But for the minority, which included both our 
pacifists and our chauvinists, it was either too much 
or too little. For, on the one hand, its founda- 
tion was the theory that, amid the circumstances 
of Europe in which it had to be built up, human 
nature could not be safely relied on unswervingly 
to resist warlike impulses. On the other hand, 
this peril notwithstanding, it was the considered 
view of those responsible that war neither ought 

14 



y 




© London Stereoscopic Co. 

VISCOUNT HALDANE 

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR FROM DECEMBER, 1905 TO 
JUNE, 1912; LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR FROM JUNE, 1912 
TO MAY, 1915. 



Introduction 

to be regarded as being inevitable, nor was so in 
fact. It was quite true that the development of 
military preparations had been so great as to make 
Europe resemble an armed camp; but, if actual 
conflict could be averted, the burden this state of 
things implied ought finally to render its continu- 
ance no longer tolerable. What was really required 
was that unbroken peace should be preserved, and 
the hand of time left to operate. 

In the course of history it has rarely been the 
case that any war that has broken out was really 
inevitable, and there does not appear to be any 
sufficient reason for thinking that the war of 1914 
was an exception to the general rule. It seems 
clear that, if Germany had resolved to do so, she 
could quite safely have abstained from entering 
upon it and from encouraging Austria in a mad 
adventure. The reason why the war came appears 
to have been that at some period in the year 1913 
the German Government finally laid the reins on 
the necks of men whom up to then it had held in 
restraint. The decision appears to have been 
allowed at this point to pass from civilians to 
soldiers. I do not believe that even then the 
German Government as a whole intended deliber- 
ately to invoke the frightful consequences of actual 
war, even if it seemed likely to be victorious. But 

15 



Before the War 

I do believe that it elected to take the risk of 
what it thought improbable, a general resistance by 
the Entente Powers if Germany were to threaten 
to use her great strength. In thus departing in 
1913 from the appearance of self-restraint which 
in the main they had displayed up to then, the 
Emperor and his Ministers misjudged the situa- 
tion. They did not foresee the crisis to which their 
policy was conducting, and when that crisis arrived 
they lost their heads and blundered in trying to 
deal with it. They did not perceive the whirlpool 
toward which they were heading. They thought 
that they could safely expose what was precarious 
to a strain, and secure the substance of a real 
victory without having to overcome actual resist- 
ance. Had they put an extreme ambition for their 
country aside, and been careful in their language 
to others, they might have attained a considerable 
success without a shot being fired. But tliey were 
over ambitious and in their language they were far 
from careful. A few unlucky words made all the 
difference in the concluding days of July, 1914: 

"Ten lines, a statesman's life in each." 

We here had done the best we could, according 
to our lights, to keep Germany from misjudging 
us. It was not always easy to do this. The genius 

16 



Introduction 

of our people was not well adapted for the particu- 
lar task. If the only question to-day were whether 
we always rendered ourselves intelligible to her, she 
might say with some show of reason that we did 
not. She might have grumbled, as Bismarck used 
to do, over our apparent indefiniteness. But that 
indefiniteness in policy was only apparent. Its 
form was due to the habit of mind which was, 
what it always has been and probably always 
will be, the habit of mind of the people of these 
was the defect of her qualities that 
ermany from understanding what this 
d truly imported, and we have never 
in at any period of our history how 
ever understood it. Let anyone who 
ead the German memoirs which have 
ce the war. But it remains not the 
d obvious that the purpose of the 
rnment which fashioned the policy in 
question was to leave no stone unturned in the 
endeavor to find a way of keeping the peace 
between Germany and the Entente Powers. Now 
success in that endeavor was not a certainty, and 
it was necessary to insure against the risk of 
failure. The second branch of British policy 
related to the provision for defense rendered 
imperative by the element of uncertainty which 

17 



Before the War 

was unavoidable. The duty of the Government 
of this country was to make sure that, if their 
endeavor to preserve peace failed, the country 
should be prepared, in the best way of those that 
were practicable, to face the situation that might 
emerge. 

Impetuous persons ask why, if there was even 
a chance of a great European war in which we 
might be involved, we did not appreciate the 
magnitude of what was at stake, and, laying 
everything else aside, concentrate our efforts on 
the immediate fashioning of such vast military 
forces as we possessed toward the end of the wai^ 
The answer will be found in the fourth chapter. 
We were aware of the risk, and we took what 
we thought the best means to meet it. Had we 
tried to do what we are reproached for not having 
done, we must have become weaker before we 
could have become stronger. For this statement 
I have given the military reasons. In a time of 
peace, even if the country had assented to the 
attempt being made, it is certain that we could 
not have accomplished such a purpose without long 
delay. It is probable that the result would have 
been failure, and it is almost certain that we should 
have provoked a "preventive war" on the part 
of Germany, a war not only with a very fair 

18 



Introduction 

prospect, as things then stood, of a German 
success, but with something else that would have 
looked like the justification of a German effort to 
prevent that country from being encircled. Such 
a war would, with equal likelihood, have been the 
outcome even of the proclamation at such a time 
of a military alliance between the Entente Powers. 

Other critics, belonging to a wholly different 
school of political thought, ask why we moved at 
all, and why we did not adhere to the good old 
policy of holding aloof from interference in 
Continental affairs. The answer is simple. The 
days when "splendid isolation" was possible were 
gone. Our sea power, even as an instrument of 
self-defense, was in danger of becoming inadequate 
in the absence of friendships which should insure 
that other navies would remain neutral if they did 
not actively co-operate with ours. It was only 
through the medium of such friendships that ulti- 
mate naval preponderance could be secured. The 
consciousness of that fact pervaded the Entente. 
With those responsible for the conduct of 
tremendous affairs probability has to be the guide 
of life. The question is always not what ought to 
happen but what is most likely to happen. 

On the details of the diplomatic aspect of our 
endeavor, and on the spirit in which it was sought 

19 



Before the War 

to carry it out, the second and third chapters of 
the book may serve to throw some light. The 
fourth chapter relates to the strategical plan, 
worked out after much consideration, for the 
possible event of failure. The plan was throughout 
based on the maintenance of superior sea power as 
the paramount instrument. As is indicated, the 
conservation of sufficient sea power implied as 
essential close and friendly relations with France, 
and also with Russia. Had there been no initial 
reason for the Entente policy, to be found in the 
desire to get rid of all causes of friction with 
these two great nations, the preservation of the 
prospect of continuing able to command the 
sea in war would in itself have necessitated the 
Entente. This conclusion was the result of the 
stocktaking of their assets for self-defense which 
the Entente Powers had to make when confronted 
with the growing organization for war of the 
Central Powers. 

To set up the balancing of Powers as a principle 
was what we in this country would have been glad 
to have avoided had it been practicable to do so. 
We should have preferred the freedom of our old 
position of "splendid isolation." But the growing 
preparations of the Central Powers compelled 
Great Britain, France, and Russia to think of safety 

20 



Introduction 

for each of them severally as to be secured only by 
treating such safety as a common interest. In the 
face of a new and growing danger we dared not 
leave ourselves to the risk of being dealt with in 
detail. The first thing to be done was, if possible, 
to convince the Central Powers that it would be to 
their own advantage to come to a complete agree- 
ment with us, an agreement of a business charac- 
ter, analogous to that which Lord Lansdowne had 
so satisfactorily concluded with France, and 
accompanied by cessation of the reasons which had 
led them to pile up armaments. There were highly 
influential persons in Germany who were far from 
averse to the suggested business arrangement. 
The armament question presented greater difficulty 
in that country, largely because of its tradition. 
But its solution was vital, for there were also those 
in Germany whose aim was to dispute with Great 
Britain the possession of the trident. Now for 
us, who constituted the island center of a scattered 
Empire, and who depended for food and raw 
materials on freedom to sail our ships, the question 
of sea power adequate for security was one of life 
or death. We could not sit still and allow Germany 
so to increase her navy in comparison with ours that 
she could make other Powers believe that their 
safest course was to throw in their lot and join 

21 



Before the War 

their fleets with hers. We were bound to seek to 
make and maintain friendships, and to this end not 
only to preserve our margin of strength at sea, but 
to make ourselves able, if it became essential, to 
help our friends in case of aggression, thereby 
securing ourselves. That was the new situation 
which in the final result the old military spirit in 
Germany had created. 

The balance of power is a dangerous principle; 
a general friendship between all Great Powers, or, 
better still, a League of the Nations, is by far pre- 
ferable. But that consideration does not touch the 
actual point, which is that we did not seek to set 
up the principle of balancing that has given rise to 
so many questions. It was forced on us and was 
a sheer necessity of the situation. We did all we 
could to avoid it by negotiations with Germany, 
which, had they succeeded in the end, would have 
relieved France and Russia as much as ourselves 
and would have prevented the war. 

Our efforts to preserve the peace ended in 
failure. The cause of that failure was nothing 
that we failed to do or that France did. It was 
proximately Austrian recklessness and indirectly, 
but just as strongly, German ambition. A real 
desire in July, 1914, on the part of the Central 
Powers to avoid war would have averted it. That 

22 



Introduction 

Serbia may have been a provocative neighbor is 
no answer to the reproaches made to-day against 
the old Governments in Vienna and Berlin. 
They failed to take the steps requisite if peace 
were to be preserved. 

People ask why the British Government 
between 1906 and 1914 did not discuss in public 
a situation which it understood well, and appeal to 
the nation. The answer is that to have done so 
would have been greatly to increase the difficulty 
of averting war. Up to the middle of 1913 the 
indications were that it was far from unlikely that 
war might in the result be averted. That was 
the view of some, both here and on the Continent, 
who were most competent to judge, men who 
had real opportunities for close observation from 
day to day. It is a view which is not in material 
conflict with anything we have since learned. 
The question whether war is inevitable has always 
been, as Bismarck more than once insisted, one 
for the statesmen of the countries concerned, 
and not for the soldiers and sailors who have a 
restricted field to work in, and for whom it is in 
consequence difficult to see things as a whole. 
Nor does great importance attach to-day to the 
triumphant declarations of those who, having 
chanced to guess aright, take pride in the cheap 

23 






Before the War 

title to wisdom which has become theirs after the 
event. Still less does respect attach to the small 
but noisy minority in each of the countries 
concerned who in the years before 1914 were 
continuously contributing to bringing war on our 
heads by expressions of dislike to neighboring 
nations, and by prophecies that war with them 
must come. In the main Germany was worse in 
this feature than ourselves. But there were those 
here whose language made them useful propagan- 
dists for the German military party, to whom they 
were of much service. 

Few wars are really inevitable. If we knew 
better how we should be careful to comport our- 
selves it may be that none are so. But extremists, 
whether chauvinist or pacifist, are not helpful in 
avoiding wars. That is because human nature is 
what it is. 

Those who had to make the effort to keep the 
peace failed. But that neither shows that they 
ought not to have tried with all the strength they 
possessed in the way they did, nor that they would 
have done better had they discussed delicate details 
in public. There are topics and conjunctures in 
the almost daily changing relations between 
Governments as to which silence is golden. For 
however proper it may be in point of broad prin- 

24 



Introduction 

ciple that the people should be fully informed of 
what concerns them vitally, the most important 
thing is those to whom they have confided their 
concerns should be given the best chance of success 
in averting danger to their interests. To have said 
more in Parliament and on the platform in the 
years in question, or to have said it otherwise, 
would have been to run grave risks of more than 
one sort. It is my strong impression that Lord 
Grey of Fallodon took the only course that was 
practicable, and that, had the danger of the 
catastrophe to be faced again and for the first 
time, the course he took would, even in the light 
of all we know to-day, again afford the best chance 
of avoiding it. He succeeded in improving greatly 
for the time the relations between this country and 
Germany, and but for the outbreak in the 
Near East he would probably have succeeded in 
navigating the dangerous waters successfully. The 
chance was far from being a hopeless one, and 
subsequent study of the facts has strengthened my 
impression that down to at least about the 
middle of the year 1913 the chances were sub- 
stantially in his favor. A sufficiency at least of 
the leaders in other countries were co-operating 
with him, not all the leaders, but those who were 
in reality most important. The war when it came 

25 



Before the War 

was due, not only to the failure of certain of the 
prominent men in the capitals of the Central 
Powers to adhere to principles to which for a long 
time they had held fast, but to the accident of 
untoward circumstances and the contingency that 
is inseparable from human affairs. 

Such are some of the reasons which have led me 
to say what I have tried to express in the pages 
which follow. I have never been able to bring 
myself to believe that there are vast differences 
between the ways of thinking and habits of mind 
of the great and most highly civilized peoples of 
Europe. I have seen something of the Germans, 
and what I have learned of them and of their 
history has led me to the conclusion that, certain 
traditions of theirs notwithstanding, they resemble 
us more than they differ from us. If this be 
so, the sooner we take advantage of our present 
victory by seeking to turn our eyes from the past 
as far as can be, and to look steadily toward a 
future in which the misery and sin which that past 
saw shall be dwelt on to the least extent that is 
practicable, the better it will be for ourselves as 
well as for the rest of the world. 

That world has been reminded of a great truth 
which had been partly forgotten by those whose 
faith lay in militarism. It is that to set up might 

26 



Introduction 

as the foundation of right may in the end be to 
inspire those around with a passionate desire to hold 
such might in check and to overcome it. Demo- 
cracy is not a system that lends itself easily to 
scientific preparation for war, but when democratic 
nations are really aroused their staying power, 
just because it rests on a true General Will, is 
without rival. The latent force in humanity which 
has its foundation in ethical idealism is the greatest 
of all forces for the vindication of right. German 
militarism managed to fail to understand this. Let 
us take pains to show our late enemies that if they 
make it clear that they have extinguished such 
militarism in a lasting fashion, the quarrel with 
them is at an end. 

I am far from thinking that we here are perfect 
in our habits as a nation. We are apt not to keep 
in view how what we do is likely to look to others. 
We are somewhat deficient in the faculty of self- 
examination and self-criticism. Want of clarity of 
ground-principle in higher ideals is apt to prove a 
hindrance to more than the individual only. It 
generally brings with it want of clarity in the sense 
of social obligation. And this sometimes extends 
even to our relations to other countries. 

It leads to our being misinterpreted as a nation. 
We have suffered a good deal in the past from hav- 

27 



Before the War 

ing attributed to us motives which were not ours. 
The reason was the assumption that the apparent 
absence of definiteness in national purpose must 
have been designed as a cover for hidden and selfish 
ends. It is not true. We are indeed very insular, 
and what has been called the international mind is 
not common among the people of these islands. 
But we are kindly at heart, and when we have 
seemed self-regarding it has been simply because 
we were not conscious of our own limitations and 
had not much appreciation of the modes of thought 
of other people. We have paid the penalty for 
this defect at periods in our history. At one time 
France suspected us, I think in the main unjustly. 
Later on Germany suspected us, I think of a 
certainty unjustly. Now these things arise in 
part at least from our reputation for a particu- 
lar kind of disposition, our supposed habitual and 
deliberately adopted desire to wait until the par- 
ticular international situation of the moment should 
show how we could profit, before we gave any 
assurance as to the way in which we should act. 
What has given rise to this misunderstanding of our 
attitude in our relations to other countries is simply 
an exemplification of what has prevented us from 
fully understanding ourselves. It is our gift to be 
able to apply ourselves in emergencies, at home 

28 



Introduction 

and abroad, with immense energy, and our success 
in promptly pulling ourselves together and coping 
with the unexpected has often suggested to out- 
siders that we had long ago looked ahead. This has 
been said of us on the Continent. It is not so. We 
do not study the art of fishing in troubled waters. 
The waiting habit in our transactions, domestic as 
well as foreign, arises from our inveterate prefer- 
ence for thinking in images rather than in concepts. 
We put off decisions until the whole of the facts can 
be visualized. This carries with it that we often 
do not act until it is very late. Our gifts enable 
us to move with energy, if not always with pre- 
cision. To predict what we will do in a given case 
is not easy for a foreigner. It is not easy even for 
ourselves. We have few abstract principles, and 
reliable induction from our past is not easy. We 
are often guided by what Mr. Justice Wendell 
Holmes has called "the intuition more subtle than 
any particular major premise." Nor is help to be 
derived from any study of our general outlook on 
life, for that outlook is hard to formulate even to 
ourselves. 

Now all this, our peculiar gift, if kept under 
control, may well have its practical advantage, but, 
as the case stands, it is apt to bring in its train 
a good deal of disadvantage. In periods when 

29 



Before the War 

nations are trying to render firm the basis of peace 
by remolding and giving precision to their aims, 
so that these can be made common aims, lack of 
definiteness in national ideals is a sure source of 
embarrassment. At a time when democracy is 
more and more claiming in terms to occupy the 
whole field it becomes increasingly desirable that 
the higher purposes of democracy should become 
clear to the people themselves. For the practise 
of a country can never be wholly divorced from its 
theory of life. The tendencies of the national will 
are bound up with the nation's science, with its 
literature, with its art, and with its religion. These 
tendencies are affected by the capacity of the nation 
to understand and express its own soul. Beyond 
science, literature, art and religion there lies some- 
thing that may be called the national philosophy, a 
disposition rather than a definite creed. This sort 
of philosophy is different in France from what it 
is in Germany, and in Germany from what it is 
in the English-speaking countries. The philosophy 
of a people takes shape in the attitude its leaders 
adopt in their estimation of values and of the order 
in which they should be placed. And this turns 
on the conceptions and ideas which are current in 
the various departments of mental activity. It is 
thus that a philosophy of life has to be given some 

3° 



Introduction 

sort of place in his professions even by the states- 
man who has to address Parliament and the public. 
He is driven to make speeches in which a good 
many conceptions and ideas have to be brought 
together. And it gives rise to a great difference of 
quality in such utterances if the general outlook of 
the speaker be a large one. But this requires that 
he should know himself and be aware of the con- 
ceptions and ideas which dominate his mind, and 
should have examined their scope before employing 
them. 

How some of those who were deeply respon- 
sible for the conduct of affairs tried to think in the 
anxious years before the war, and how they 
endeavored to apply their conclusions, is what I 
have endeavored to state in the course of what 
follows. They doubtless made mistakes and fell 
short of accomplishment in what they were aiming 
at. It is human so to do. But they tried what 
seemed to them the wisest course, and I have yet 
to learn that it was practicable to have followed 
any different course without a failure worse than 
any that occurred. After all, in the end the British 
Empire won, however hard it had to fight. 



3i 



DIPLOMACY BEFORE THE WAR 



CHAPTER II 

DIPLOMACY BEFORE THE WAR 

If in this chapter I speak frequently in the first 
person and of my own part in the negotiations 
which it records, it is not from any desire to make 
prominent either my own personality or the part 
it fell to me to play. The reason is that I have 
endeavored to write of what I myself heard and 
saw, and that in consequence most of what follows 
is, for the sake of accuracy, largely transcribed 
from my personal diaries and records made at the 
time when the events to which they related took 
place. So frequent an employment of the personal 
pronoun as has been made in these pages would 
ordinarily be a blemish in taste, if not in style also, 
but in this case it seemed safer not to try to 
avoid it. 

Many things that happened in the years just 
before 1914, as well as the events of the great 
war itself, are still too close to permit of our 
studying them in their full context. But before 

35 



Before the War 

much time has passed the historians will have 
accumulated material that will overflow their 
libraries, and their hands will remain occupied for 
generations to come. At this moment all that 
safely can be attempted is that actual observers 
should set down what they have themselves 
observed. For there has rarely been a time when 
the juridical maxim that "hearsay is not 
evidence" ought to be more sternly insisted 
on. 

If I now venture to set down what follows in 
these pages, it is because I had certain opportuni- 
ties for forming a judgment at first hand for 
myself. I am not referring to the circumstance 
that for a brief period I once, long ago, lived the 
life of a student at a German University, or that 
I was frequently in Germany in the years that 
followed. Nor do I mean that I have tried to 
explore German habits of reflection, as they may 
be studied in the literature of Germany. Other 
people have done all these things more thoroughly 
and more extensively than I have. What I do 
mean is that from the end of 1905 to the summer 
of 1912 I had special chances for direct observa- 
tion of quite another kind. During that period I 
was Secretary of State for War in Great Britain, 
and from the latter year to April, 1915, I was the 

36 



Diplomacy Before the War 

holder of another office and a member of the 
British Cabinet. 

During the first of the above periods it fell 
to me to work out the military organization 
that would be required to insure, as far as was 
practicable, against risk, should those strenuous 
efforts fail into which Sir Edward Grey, as he then 
was, had thrown his strength. He was endeavor- 
ing with all his might to guard the peace of 
Europe from danger. As he and I had for many 
years been on terms of close intimacy, it was 
not unnatural that he should ask me to do what I 
could by helping in some of the diplomatic work 
which was his, as well as by engaging in my own 
special task. Indeed, the two phases of activity 
could hardly be separable. 

I was not in Germany after May, 1912, for 
the duties of Lord Chancellor, on which office I 
then entered, made it unconstitutional for me to 
leave the United Kingdom, save under such ex- 
ceptional conditions as were conceded by the King 
and the Cabinet when, in the autumn of 1913, I 
made a brief yet memorable visit to the United 
States and Canada. But in 1906, while War 
Minister, I paid, on the invitation of the German 
Emperor, a visit to him at Berlin, to which city 
I went on after previously staying with King 

37 



Before the War 

Edward at Marienbad, where he and the then 
Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 
were resting. 

While at Berlin I saw much of the Emperor, 
and I also saw certain of his Ministers, notably 
Prince von Biilow, Herr von Tschirsky and Gen- 
eral von Einem, the first being at that time Chancel- 
lor, and the last two being respectively the Foreign 
and War Ministers. I was invited to examine 
for myself the organization of the German War 
Office, which I wished to study for purposes of 
reform at home; and this I did in some detail, 
in company with an expert adviser from my per- 
sonal staff, Colonel Ellison, my military private 
secretary, who accompanied me on this journey.* 
There the authorities explained to us the general 
nature of the organization for rapid mobilization 
which had been developed under the great von 
Moltke, and subsequently carried farther. The 
character of this organization was, in its general 
features, no secret in Germany, altho it was 

* Of course I neither tried to obtain nor did obtain from the authori- 
ties in Germany any information that was not available to the general 
public there. I went simply to see the system of administration and 
how it was worked. Not even Count Reventlow, in his highly critical 
accounts of my visits in the book "Deutschlands Auswartige Politik," 
imagines that I had access to information which I was not free to use. 
The German Government had ascertained for itself that a new organ- 
ization of the British Army was on foot, but it neither told its own 
secrets nor asked for ours. 

38 



Diplomacy Before the War 

somewhat unfamiliar in Anglo-Saxon countries; 
and it interested my adviser and myself intensely. 

At that time there was an active militarist party 
in Germany, which, of course, was not wholly 
pleased at the friendly reception with which we 
met from the Emperor and from crowds in the 
Streets of Berlin. We were well aware of the 
activity of this party. But it stood then unmistak- 
ably for a minority, and I formed the opinion that 
those who wanted Germany to remain at peace, 
quite as much as to be strong, had at least an excel- 
lent chance of keeping their feet. I realized, and 
had done so for years past, that it was not merely 
because of the beaux yeux of foreign peoples that 
Germany desired to maintain good relations all 
round. She had become fully conscious of a grow- 
ing superiority in the application to industry of 
scientific knowledge and in power to organize her 
resources founded on it ; and her rulers hoped, and 
not without good ground, to succeed by these 
means in the peaceful penetration of the world. 

I had personally for some time been busy in 
pressing the then somewhat coldly received claims 
for a better system of education, higher and tech- 
nical as well as elementary, among my own coun- 
trymen, and had met with some success in asking 
for the establishment of teaching universities and of 

39 



Before the War 

technical colleges, such as the new Imperial College 
of Science and Technology at South Kensington. 
Of these we had very substantially increased the 
number during the eight years which preceded my 
visit to Berlin; but I had learned from visits of 
inspection to Germany that much more remained 
to be done before we could secure our commercial 
and industrial position against the unhasting but 
unresting efforts of our formidable competitor. 

As to the German people outside official circles 
and the universities, I thought of them then what I 
think of them now. They were very much like 
our own people, except in one thing. This was 
that they were trained simply to obey, and to carry 
out whatever they were told by their rulers. I used, 
during numerous unofficial tours in Germany, to 
wander about incognito, and to smoke and drink 
beer with the peasants and the people whenever I 
could get the chance. What impressed me was the 
little part they had in directing their own govern- 
ment, and the little they knew about what it was 
doing. There was a general disposition to accept, 
as a definition of duty which must not be ques- 
tioned, whatever they were told to do by the 
Vorstand. It is this habit of mind, dating back to 
the da5 T s of Frederick the Great, with only occa- 
sional and brief interruptions, which has led many 

40 



Diplomacy Before the War 

people to think that the German people at large 
have in them "a double dose of original sin." Even 
when their soldiers have been exceptionally brutal 
in methods of warfare, I do not think that this is 
so. The habit of mind which prevails is that of 
always looking to the rulers for orders, and the 
brutality has been that enjoined — in accordance 
with its own military policy of shortening war by 
making it terrible to the enemy — by the General 
Staff of Germany, a body before whose injunctions 
even the Emperor, so far as my observation goes, 
always has bowed. 

But I must now return to my formal visit to 
Berlin in the autumn of 1906. I was, as I have 
already said, everywhere cordially welcomed, and 
at the end the heads of the German Army enter- 
tained me at a dinner in the War Office, at which 
the War Minister presided, and there was present, 
among others, the Chief of the German General 
Staff. They were all friendly. I do not think 
that my impression was wrong that even the re- 
sponsible heads of the Army were then looking 
almost entirely to "peaceful penetration," with 
only moral assistance from the prestige attaching 
to the possession of great armed forces in reserve. 
Our business in the United Kingdom was there- 
fore to see that we were prepared for perils that 

41 



Before the War 

might unexpectedly arise out of this policy, and 
not less, by developing our educational and indus- 
trial organization, to make ourselves fit to meet 
the greater likelihood of a coming keen competi- 
tion in the peaceful arts. 

One thing that seemed to me essential for the 
preservation of good relations was that cordial and 
frequent intercourse between the people of the 
two countries should be encouraged and developed. 
I set myself in my speeches to avoid all expres- 
sions which might be construed as suggesting a 
critical attitude on our part, or a failure to recog- 
nize the existence of peaceful ideas among what 
was then, as I still think, a large majority of the 
people of Germany. The attitude of some news- 
papers in England, and still more that of the 
chauvinist minority in Germany itself, did not 
render this quite an easy task. But there were 
good people in these days in Germany as well as in 
England, and the United States might be counted 
on as likely to co-operate in discouraging friction. 

Meanwhile there was the chance that the 
course of this policy might be interrupted by some 
event which we could not control. A conversation 
with the then Chief of the German General Staff, 
General von Moltke, the nephew of the great man 
of that name, satisfied me that he did not really 

42 



Diplomacy Before the War 

look with any pleasurable military expectation to 
the results of a war with the United Kingdom 
alone. It would, he observed to me, be in his 
opinion a long and possibly indecisive war, and 
must result in much of the overseas trade of both 
countries passing to a tertius gaudens, by which he 
meant the United States. 

I had little doubt that what he said to me on 
this occasion represented his real opinion. But I 
had in my mind the apprehension of an emergency 
of a different nature. Germany was more likely 
to attack France than ourselves. The German 
Emperor had told me that, altho he was trying 
to develop good relations with France, he was 
finding it difficult. This seemed to me ominous. 
The paradox presented itself that a war with 
Germany in which we were alone would be easier 
to meet than a war in which France was attacked 
along with us; for if Germany succeeded in over- 
running France she might establish naval bases on 
the northern Channel ports of that country, quite 
close to our shores, and so, with the possible aid of 
the submarines, long-range guns and air-machines 
of the future, interfere materially with our naval 
position in the Channel and our fleet defenses 
against invasion. 

I knew, too, that the French Government was 

43 



Before the War 

apprehensive. In the historical speech which Sir 
Edward Grey made on August 3, 1914, the day 
before the British Government directed Sir 
Edward Goschen, our Ambassador in Berlin, to 
ask for his passports, he informed the House of 
Commons that so early as January, 1906, the 
French Government, after the Morocco difficulty, 
had drawn his attention to the international 
situation. It had informed him that it considered 
the danger of an attack on France by Germany 
to be a real one, and had inquired whether, in the 
event of an unprovoked attack, Great Britain 
would think that she had so much at stake as to 
make her willing to join in resisting it. If this 
were to be even a possible attitude for Great 
Britain, the French Government had intimated to 
him that it was in its opinion desirable that con- 
versation should take place between the General 
Staff of France and the newly created General 
Staff of Great Britain, as to the form which mili- 
tary co-operation in resisting invasion of the 
northern portions of France might best assume. 
We had a great Navy, and the French had a great 
Army. But our Navy could not operate on land, 
and the French Army, altho large, was not so 
large as that which Germany, with her superior 
resources in population, commanded. Could we, 

44 



Diplomacy Before the War 

then, reconsider our military organization, so that 
we might be able rapidly to dispatch, if we ever 
thought it necessary in our own interests, say, 
100,000 men in a well-formed army, not to invade 
Belgium, which no one thought of doing, but 
to guard the French frontier of Belgium in case 
the German Army should seek to enter France in 
that way. If the German attack were made 
farther south, where the French chain of modern 
fortresses had rendered their defensive positions 
strong, the French Army would then be able, set 
free from the difficulty of mustering in full 
strength opposite the Belgian boundary, to guard 
the southern frontier. 

Sir Edward Grey consulted the Prime 
Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Asquith, and 
myself as War Minister, and I was instructed, in 
January, 1906, a month after assuming office, to 
take the examination of the question in hand. 
This occurred in the middle of the General Elec- 
tion which was then in progress. I went at once 
to London and summoned the heads of the British 
General Staff and saw the French military attache, 
Colonel Huguet, a man of sense and ability. I 
became aware at once that there was a new army 
problem. It was, how to mobilize and concentrate 

45 



Before the War 

at a place of assembly to be opposite the Belgian 
frontier, a force calculated as adequate (with the 
assistance of Russian pressure in the East) to make 
up for the inadequacy of the French armies for 
their great task of defending the entire French 
frontier from Dunkirk down to Belfort, or even 
farther south, if Italy should join the Triple 
Alliance in an attack. 

But an investigation of a searching character 
presently revealed great deficiencies in the British 
military organization of these days. We had 
never contemplated the preparation of armies for 
warfare of the Continental type. The older 
generals had not been trained for this problem. 
We had, it was true, excellent troops in India and 
elsewhere. These were required as outposts for 
Imperial defense. As they had to serve for long 
periods and to be thoroughly disciplined, they had 
to be professional soldiers, engaged to serve in most 
cases for seven years with the colors and after- 
wards for five in the reserve. They were highly 
trained men, and there was a good reserve 
of them at home. But that reserve w r as not 
organized in the great self-contained divisions 
which would be required for fighting against 
armies organized for rapid action on modern Con- 
tinental principles. Its formations in peace time 

46 



Diplomacy Before the War 

were not those which would be required in such 
a war. There was in addition a serious defect in 
the artillery organization which would have pre- 
vented more than a comparatively small number of 
batteries (about forty-two only in point of fact) 
from being quickly placed on a war footing. The 
transport and supply and the medical services were 
as deficient as the artillery. 

In short, the close investigation made at that 
time disclosed that it was not possible, under the 
then existing circumstances, to put in the field 
more than about 80,000 men, and even these only 
after an interval of over two months, which would 
be required for conversion of our isolated units 
into the new war formations of an army fit to take 
the field against the German first line of active 
corps. The French naturally thought that a ma- 
chine so slow moving would be of little use to them. 
They might have been destroyed before it could 
begin to operate effectively. Both they and the 
Germans had organized on the basis that modern 
Continental warfare had become a high science. 
Hitherto we had not, and it was only our younger 
generals who had even studied this science. 

There was, therefore, nothing for it but to 
attempt a complete revolution in the organization 
of the British Army at home. The nascent General 

47 



Before the War 

Staff was finally organized in September, 1906, and 
its organization was shortly afterwards developed 
so as to extend to the entire Empire, as soon as a 
conference had taken place with the Ministers of 
the Dominions early in the following year. The 
outcome was a complete recasting, which, after 
three years' work, made it practicable rapidly to 
mobilize, not only 100,000, but 160,000 men; to 
transport them, with the aid of the Navy, to a place 
of concentration which had been settled between 
the staffs of France and Britain ; and to have them 
at their appointed place within twelve days, an 
interval based on what the German Army required 
on its side for a corresponding concentration. 

All the arrangements for this were worked out 
by the end of 1910. Both Sir John French and Sir 
Douglas Haig took an active part in the work. 
Behind the first-line army so organized, a second- 
line army of larger size, tho far less trained, 
and so designed that it could be expanded, was 
organized. This was the citizen or "Territorial" 
army, consisting in time of peace of fourteen 
divisions of infantry and artillery and fourteen 
brigades of cavalry, with the appropriate medical, 
sanitary, transport and other auxiliary services. 
Those serving in this second-line army were 
civilians, and, of course, much less disciplined than 

48 



Diplomacy Before the War 

the officers and men of the first line. Its primary 
function was home defense, but its members were 
encouraged to undertake for service abroad, if 
necessary; and a large part of this army, in point 
of fact, fought in France, Flanders and in the East 
soon after the beginning of the war, in great 
measure making up by intelligence for shortness of 
training. 

To say, therefore, that we were caught unpre- 
pared is not accurate. Compulsory service in a 
period of peace was out of the question for us. 
Moreover, it would have taken at least two 
generations to organize, and meanwhile we should 
have been weaker than without it. We had studied 
the situation and had done the only thing we 
thought we could do, after full deliberation. Our 
main strength was in our Navy and its tradition. 
Our secondary contribution was a small army 
fashioned to fulfil a scientifically measured 
function. It was, of course, a very small army, 
but it had a scientific organization on the basis 
of which a great expansion was possible. After 
all, what we set ourselves to accomplish we did 
accomplish. If the margin by which a just 
sufficient success was attained in the early days 
of the war seems to-day narrow, the reason of 
the narrow margin lay largely in the unprepared 

49 



Before the War 

condition of the armies of Russia, on which 
we and France had reckoned for rapid co- 
operation. Anyhow, we fulfilled our contract, for 
at eleven o'clock on Monday morning, August 3, 
1914, we mobilized without a hitch the whole of the 
Expeditionary Force, amounting to six divisions 
and nearly two cavalry divisions, and began its 
transport over the Channel when war was declared 
thirty-six hours later. We also at the same time 
successfully mobilized the Territorial Force and 
other units, the whole amounting to over half a 
million men. The Navy was already in its war 
stations, and there was no delay at all in putting 
w r hat we had prepared into operation. 

I speak of this with direct knowledge, for as the 
Prime Minister, who was holding temporarily the 
seals of the War Secretary, was overwhelmed with 
business, he asked me, tho I had then become 
Lord Chancellor, to go to the War Office and give 
directions for the mobilization of the machinery 
with which I was so familiar, and I did this on the 
morning of Monday, August 3, and a day later 
handed it over, in working order, to Lord 
Kitchener. 

I now return to what was the main object of 
British foreign policy between 1905 and 1914, the 
prevention of the danger of any outbreak with 

50 



Diplomacy Before the War 

Germany. Sir Edward Gre}^ worked strenuously 
with this well-defined object. If France were 
overrun, our island security would be at least 
diminished, and he had, therefore, in addition to 
his anxiety to avert a general war, a direct national 
interest to strive for, in the preservation of peace 
between Germany and France. Ever since the 
mutilation which the latter country had suffered, 
as the outcome of the War of 1870, she had felt 
sore, and her relations with Germany were not 
easy. But she did not seek a war of revenge. It 
would have been too full of risk even if she had not 
desired peace, the Franco-Russian Dual Alliance 
notwithstanding. The notion of an encirclement 
of Germany, excepting in defense against 
aggression by Germany herself, existed only in 
the minds of nervous Germans. Still, there was 
suspicion, and the question was, how to get rid 
of it. 

I have already referred to the visit I paid to the 
Emperor at Berlin in the autumn of 1906. He 
invited me to a review which he held of his troops 
there, and in the course of it rode up to the car- 
riage in which I was seated and said, "A splendid 
machine I have in this army, Mr. Haldane; now 
isn't it so? And what could I do without it, 
situated as I am between the Russians and the 

5i 



Before the War 

French? But the French are your allies — are they 
not? So I beg pardon." 

I shook my head and smiled deprecatingly, and 
replied that, were I in his Majesty's place, I should 
in any case feel safe from attack with the posses- 
sion of this machine, and that for my own part I 
enjoyed being behind it much more than if I had 
to be in front of it. 

Next day, when at the Schloss, he talked to me 
fully and cordially. What follows I extract from 
the record I made after the conversation in my 
diaries, which were kept by desire of King 
Edward, and which were printed by the Govern- 
ment on my return to London. 

He spoke of the Anglo-French Entente. He 
said that it would be wrong to infer that he had 
any critical thought about our entente with 
France. On the contrary he believed that it might 
even facilitate good relations between France and 
Germany. He wished for these good relations, 
and was taking steps through gentlemen of high 
position in France to obtain them. Not one inch 
more of French territory would he ever covet. 
Alsace and Lorraine originally had been German, 
and now even the least German of the two, 
Lorraine, because it preferred a monarchy to 
a republic, was welcoming him enthusiastically 

52 



Diplomacy Before the War 

whenever he went there. That he should have 
gone to Tangier, where both English and French 
welcomed him, was quite natural. He desired no 
quarrel, and the whole fault was Delcasse's, who 
had wanted to pick a quarrel and bring England 
into it. 

I told the Emperor that, if he would allow me 
to speak my mind freely, I would do so. He 
assented, and I said to him that his attitude had 
caused great uneasiness in England, and that this, 
and not any notion of forming a tripartite alliance 
of France, Russia, and England against him, was 
the reason of the feeling there had been. We 
were bound by no military alliance. As for our 
entente, some time since we had difficulties with 
France over Newfoundland and Egypt, and we 
had made a good business arrangement (gutes 
Geschaft) about these complicated matters of 
detail, and had simply carried out our word to 
France. 

He said that he had no criticism to make on 
this, except that if we had told him so early there 
would have been no misunderstanding. Things 
were better now, but we had not always been 
pleasant to him and ready to meet him. His army 
was for defense, not for offense. As to Russia, 
he had no Himalayas between him and Russia, 

53 



Before the War 

more was the pity. Now what about our Two- 
Power standard. All this was said with earnest- 
ness, but in a friendly way, the Emperor laying 
his finger on my shoulder as he spoke. Sometimes 
the conversation was in German, but often in 
English. 

I said that our fleet was like his Majesty's army. 
It was of the Wesen of the nation, and the Two- 
Power standard, while it might be rigid and so 
awkward, was a way of maintaining a deep-seated 
national tradition, and a Liberal Government must 
hold to it as firmly as a Conservative. Both coun- 
tries were increasing in wealth — ours, like Ger- 
many, very rapidly — and if Germany built we must 
build. But, I added, there was an excellent oppor- 
tunity for co-operation in other things. I in- 
stanced international free trade developments which 
would smooth other relations. 

The Emperor agreed. He was convinced that 
free trade was the true policy for Germany also, 
but Germany could not go so quickly here as 
England had gone. 

I referred to Friedrich List's great book as 
illustrating how military and geographical con- 
siderations had affected matters for Germany in 
this connection. 

The Emperor then spoke of Chamberlain's 
54 



Diplomacy Before the War 

policy of Tariff Reform, and said that it had caused 
him anxiety. 

I replied that with care we might avoid any real 
bad feeling over trade. The undeveloped markets 
of the world w r ere enormous, and we wanted no 
more of the surface of the globe than we had got. 

The Emperor's reply was that what he sought 
after was not territory but trade expansion. He 
quoted Goethe to the effect that if a nation wanted 
anything it must concentrate and act from within 
the sphere of its concentration. 

We then spoke of the fifty millions sterling 
per annum of chemical trade which Germany had 
got away from us. I said that this was thoroughly 
justified as the result of the practical application 
of high German science. 

"That," said he, "I delight to think, because 
it is legitimate and to the credit of my people." 

I agreed, and said that similarly we had got the 
best of the world's shipbuilding. Each nation had 
something to learn. 

The Emperor then passed to the topic of The 
Hague Conference, trusting that disarmament 
would not be proposed. If so, he could not go in. 

I observed that the word "disarmament" was 
perhaps unfortunately chosen. 

"The best testimony," said the Emperor, "to 

55 



Before the War 

my earnest desire for peace is that I have had no 
war, tho I should have had war if I had not earn- 
estly striven to avoid it." 

Throughout the conversation, which was as 
animated as it was long, the Emperor was cordial 
and agreeable. He expressed the wish that more 
English Ministers would visit Berlin, and that he 
might see more of our Royal Family. I left the 
Palace at 3.30 p.m., having gone there at 1.0. 

On another day during this visit Prince von 
Biilow, who was then Chancellor, called on me. I 
was out, but found him later at the Schloss, and had 
a conversation with him. He said to me that both 
the Emperor and himself were thoroughly aware 
of the desire of King Edward and his Government 
to maintain the new relations with France in their 
integrity, and that, in the best German opinion, 
this was no obstacle to building up close relations 
with Germany also. 

I said that this was the view held on our 'side 
too, and that the only danger lay in trying to force 
everything at once. Too great haste was to be 
deprecated. 

He said that he entirely agreed, and quoted 
Prince Bismarck, who had laid it down that you 
can not make a flower grow any sooner by putting 
fire to heat it. 

56 




COUNT PAUL WOLFF METTERNICH 

GERMAN AMBASSADOR TO GREAT BRITAIN FROM 1901 TO 1912 



Diplomacy Before the War 

I said that, none the less, frequent and cordial 
interchanges of view were very important, and that 
not even the smallest matters should be neglected. 

He alluded with satisfaction to my personal 
relations with the German Ambassador in 
London, Count Metternich. 

I begged him, if there were any small matters 
which were too minute to take up officially, but 
which seemed unsatisfactory, to let me know of 
them in a private capacity through Count Metter- 
nich. This I did because I had discovered some 
soreness at restrictions which had been placed on 
the attendance of German military officers at 
maneuvers in England, and I had found that 
there had been some reprisals. I did not refer to 
these, but said that I had the authority of the 
sovereign to give assistance to German officers who 
were sent over to the maneuvers to study them. 
I added that while our army was small, compared 
with theirs, it had had great experience in the 
conduct of small expeditions, and that there were 
in consequence some things worth seeing. 

He then spoke of the navy. It was natural 
that with the increase of German commerce Ger- 
many should wish to increase her fleet — from a 
sea-police point of view — but that they had 
neither the wish, nor, having regard to the strain 

57 



Before the War 

their great army put on their resources, the power 
to build against Great Britain. 

I said that the best opinion in England fully 
understood this attitude, and that we did not in 
the least misinterpret their recent progress, nor 
would he misinterpret our resolve to maintain, for 
purely defensive purposes, our navy at a Two- 
Power standard. Some day, I said, there might 
be rivalry, but I thought we might assume that, if 
it ever happened, it would not be for many years, 
and that our policy for the present was strongly for 
Free Trade, so that the more Germany exported 
to Great Britain and British possessions, the more 
we should export in exchange to them. 

He expressed himself pleased that I should say 
this, and added that he was confident that a couple 
of years' interchange of friendly communications 
in this spirit would produce a great development, 
and perhaps lead for both of us to pleasant relations 
with other Powers also. 

There were during this visit in 1906 other con- 
versations of which a record was preserved, but 
I have referred to the most important, and I will 
only mention, in concluding my account of these 
days in Berlin in September, 1906, the talk I had 
with the Foreign Minister, Herr von Tschirsky, 
afterward the German Ambassador at Vienna 

58 



Diplomacy Before the War 

before the war, and reported as having been a 
fomenter of the Austrian outbreak against Serbia. 
He may have been anti-Slav and anti-Russian, 
but I did not find him, in the long conversation 
we had in 1906, otherwise than sensible as regards 
France. 

I explained that my business in Berlin was 
merely with War Office matters, and, even as 
regards these, quite unofficial. 

He said that there had been much tendency to 
misinterpret in both countries, but that things 
were now better. I might take it that our pre- 
cision about the Entente with France, and our 
desire to rest firmly on the arrangement we had 
made, were understood in Germany, and that it 
was realized that we were not likely to be able fo 
build up anything with his own country which 
did not rest on this basis. But he thought, and 
the Emperor agreed, that the Entente was no 
hindrance to all that was necessary between Ger- 
many and England, which was not an alliance but 
a thoroughly good business understanding. Some 
day we might come into conflict, if care were not 
taken; but if care was taken, there was no need 
of apprehension. 

I said that I believed this to be Sir Edward 
Grey's view also, and that he was anxious to com- 

59 



Before the War 

municate with the German Government before- 
hand whenever there was a chance of German 
interests being touched. 

He went on to speak of the approaching 
Hague Conference, and of the difficulty Germany 
would have if asked to alter the proportion of 
her army to her population — a proportion which 
rested on a fundamental law. For Germany 
alone to object to disarmament would be to put 
herself in a hole, and it would be a friendly act 
if we could devise some way out of a definite 
vote on reduction. Germany might well enter 
a conference to record and emphasize the improve- 
ment all round in international relations, the 
desirability of further developing this improve- 
ment, and the hope that with it the growth of 
armaments would cease. But he was afraid of the 
kind of initiative which might come from America. 
The United States had no sympathy with Euro- 
pean military and naval difficulties. 

I said that I thought that we, as a Govern- 
ment, were pledged to try to bring about some- 
thing more definite than what he suggested as a 
limit, but that I would report what he had told me. 

He then passed to general topics. He was 
emphatic in his assurance that what Germany 
wanted was increase of commercial development. 

60 



Diplomacy Before the War 

Let the nations avoid inflicting pin-pricks, and 
leave each other free to breathe the air. He said 
that he thought we might have opportunities of 
helping them to get the French into an easier mood. 
They were difficult and suspicious, he observed, 
and it was hard to transact business with them, for 
they made trouble over small points. 

On my return to London I sent to Herr von 
Tschirsky some English newspapers containing 
articles with a friendly tone, so far as the preserva- 
tion of good relations was concerned. He replied 
in a letter from which I translate the material por- 
tion: 

"I see with pleasure from the articles which 
your Excellency has sent me for his Majesty, and 
from other expressions of public opinion in English 
newspapers, that in the leading Liberal papers of 
England a more friendly tone toward Germany is 
making itself apparent. You would have been able 
to derive the same impression from reading our 
newspapers, with the exception of a few Pan- 
German prints. Alas! papers like The Times, 
Morning Post and Standard can not bring them- 
selves to refrain from their attitude of dislike, and 
are always rejoicing in being suspicious of every 
action of the Imperial Government. They contri- 
bute in this fashion appreciably to render weak the 

61 



Before the War 

new tone of diminishing misunderstanding which 
has arisen between the two countries. If I fear 
that under these circumstances it will be a long time 
before mutual understanding has grown up to the 
point at which it stood more than a century ago, 
and as you and I desire it in the well-understood 
interests of England and Germany, still I hope and 
am persuaded that the relations of the two Govern- 
ments will remain good." 

A year after the visit I had paid to Berlin the 
Emperor came over to stay with King Edward at 
Windsor. This was in November, 1907. The visit 
lasted several davs, and I was present most of the 
time. The Emperor was accompanied by Baron 
von Schoen, who had become Foreign Minister of 
Prussia, after having been Ambassador to the 
Court of Russia, and by General von Einem, the 
War Minister, whose inclusion in the invitation I 
had ventured to suggest to the King, as an acknowl- 
edgment of his civility to myself as War Minister 
when in Berlin. There were also at Windsor 
Count Metternich and several high military officers 
of the Emperor's personal staff and military 
cabinet. To these officers and to the War Minister 
I showed all the hospitality I could in London, and 
I received them officially at the War Office. 

But the really interesting incident of this visit, 

62 



Diplomacy Before the War 

so far as I was concerned, took place at Windsor. 
The first evening of my visit there, just after his 
arrival in November, the Emperor took me aside 
and said he was sorry that there was a good deal 
of friction over the Bagdad Railway, and that he 
did not know what we wanted as a basis for co- 
operation. 

I said that I could not answer for the Foreign 
Office, but that, speaking as War Minister, one 
thing I knew we wanted was a "gate" to protect 
India from troops coming down the new railway. 
He asked me what I meant by a "gate," and I 
said that meant the control of the section which 
would come near to the Persian Gulf. "I will give 
you the 'gate,' " replied the Emperor. 

I had no opportunity at the moment, which 
was just before dinner, for pursuing the conversa- 
tion further, but I thought the answer too im- 
portant not to be followed up. There were private 
theatricals after dinner, which lasted till nearly one 
o'clock in the morning. I was seated in the 
theater of the Castle just behind the Emperor, 
and, as the company broke up, I went forward 
and asked him whether he really meant seriously 
that he was willing to give us the "gate," because, 
if he did mean it, I would go to London early and 
see Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office. 

63 



Before the War 

Next morning, about 7.30 o'clock, a helmeted 
guardsman, one of those whom the Emperor had 
brought over with him from Berlin, knocked 
loudly at the door and came into my bedroom, and 
said that he had a message from the Emperor. It 
was that he did mean what he had said the night 
before. I at once got up and caught a train for 
London. There I saw the Foreign Secretary, 
who, after taking time to think things over, gave 
me a memorandum he had drawn up. The sub- 
stance of it was that the British Government 
would be very glad to discuss the Emperor's sug- 
gestion, but that it would be necessary, before 
making a settlement, to bring into the discussion 
France and Russia, whose interests also were in- 
volved. I was requested to sound the Emperor 
further. 

After telling King Edward of what was hap- 
pening, I had another conversation in Windsor 
Castle with the Emperor, who said that he feared 
that the bringing in of Russia particularly, not to 
speak of France, would cause difficulty; but he 
asked me to come that night, after a performance 
that was to take place in the Castle theater had 
ended, to his apartments, to a meeting to which 
he would summon the Ministers he had brought 
with him. He took the memorandum which I 

64 



Diplomacy Before the War 

had brought from London, a copy of which I had 
made for him in my own handwriting, so as to 
present it as the informal document it was in- 
tended to be. Just before dinner Baron von 
Schoen spoke to me, and told me that he had 
heard from the Emperor what had happened, and 
that the Emperor was wrong in thinking that the 
attempt to bring in Russia would lead to difficulty, 
because he, Baron von Schoen, when he was Am- 
bassador to Russia, had already discussed the 
general question with its Government, and had 
virtually come to an understanding. At the 
meeting that night we could therefore go on to 
negotiate. 

I attended the Emperor in his state rooms at 
the Castle at one o'clock in the morning, and sat 
smoking with him and his Ministers for over two 
hours. His Foreign Minister and Count Metter- 
nich and the War Minister, von Einem, were 
present. I said that I felt myself an intruder, 
because it was very much like being present at a 
sitting of his Cabinet. He replied, "Be a mem- 
ber of my Cabinet for the evening." I said that 
I was quite agreeable. 

They then engaged in a very animated con- 
versation, some of them challenging the proposal of 
the Emperor to accept the British suggestions, 

65 



Before the War 

with an outspokenness which would have astonished 
the outside world, with its notions of Teutonic 
autocracy. Count Metternich did not like what 
I suggested, that there should be a conference 
in Berlin on the subject of the Bagdad Railway 
between England, France, Russia, and Germany. 

In the end, but not until after much keen argu- 
ment, the idea was accepted, and the Emperor 
directed von Schoen to go next morning to 
London and make an official proposal to Sir 
Edward Grey. This was carried out, and the pre- 
liminary details were discussed between von 
Schoen and Sir Edward at the Foreign Office. 

Some weeks afterward difficulties were raised 
from Berlin. Germany said that she was ready to 
discuss with the British Government the question 
of the terminal portion of the railway, but she did 
not desire to bring the other two Powers into that 
discussion, because the conference would probably 
fail and accentuate the differences between her and 
the other Powers. 

The matter thus came to an end. It was, I 
think, a great pity, because I have reason to believe 
that the French view was that, if the Bagdad 
Railway question could have been settled, one 
great obstacle in the way of reconciling German 
with French and English interests would have 
♦ 66 



Diplomacy Before the War 

disappeared. I came to the conclusion afterward 
that it was probably owing to the views of Prince 
von Biilow that the proposal had come to an 
untimely end. Whether he did not wish for an 
expanded entente; whether the feeling was strong 
in Germany that the Bagdad Railway had become 
a specially German concern and should not be 
shared; or what other reason he may have had, I 
do not know; but it was from Berlin, after the 
Emperor's return there at the end of Novem- 
ber, 1907, that the negotiations were finally 
blocked. 

Altho these negotiations had no definite re- 
sult, they assisted in promoting increasing frank- 
ness between the two Foreign Offices, and other 
things went with more smoothness. Sir Edward 
Grey kept France and Russia informed of all we 
did, and he was also very open with the Germans. 
Until well on in 1911 all went satisfactorily. In 
the early part of that year the Emperor came to 
London to visit the present King, who had by that 
time succeeded to the throne. I had ventured to 
propose to the King that during the Emperor's 
visit I should, as War Minister, give a luncheon to 
the generals who were on his staff. But when the 
Emperor heard of this he sent a message that he 
would like to come and lunch with me himself, and 

67 



Before the War 

to meet people whom otherwise he might not 
see. 

I acted on my own discretion, and when he 
came to luncheon at my house in Queen Anne's 
Gate there was a somewhat widely selected party 
of about a dozen to meet him. For it included not 
only Lord Morley, Lord Kitchener, and Lord 
Curzon, whom he was sure to meet elsewhere, but 
Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, who was then leading the 
Labor Party, Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson, our 
great naval commander, Lord Moulton, Mr. 
Edmund Gosse, Mr. Sargent, Mr. Spender, the 
editor of the Westminster Gazette,, and others 
representing various types of British opinion. The 
Emperor engaged in conversation with everyone, 
and all went with smoothness. 

He had a great reception in London. But 
enthusiasm about him was somewhat damped 
when, in July, 1911, not long after his return to 
Germany, he sent the afterwards famous warship 
Panther to Agadir. The French were naturally 
alarmed, and the situation which had become so 
promising was overcast. Our naval arrangements 
and our new military organization were ready, and 
our mobilization plans were fairly complete, as 
the German General Staff knew from their mili- 
tary attache. But the point was, how to avoid an 

68 



Diplomacy Before the War 

outbreak, and to get rid of the feeling and friction 
to which the Agadir crisis was giving rise. Our 
growing good relations were temporarily clouded. 
The sending of the Panther to Agadir was not 
a prudent act. It imported either too much or 
too little. It is said to have been the plan of Herr 
von Kiderlen-Waechter, at that time the Foreign 
Secretary and generally a sensible statesman, and 
to have been done in spite of misgivings expressed 
by the Emperor about its danger. The circum- 
stances of the moment were such that one can not 
but feel a certain sympathy with the German 
perturbation at the time. The march of the French 
Army to Fez had come on them suddenly, and it 
at least suggested a development of French claims 
going beyond what Germany had agreed to at the 
Algeciras Conference nearly six years previously. 
Those who wish to inform themselves about the 
commotion the expedition of the French stirred up 
in Germany, and of the efforts the Emperor and 
Bethmann Hollweg had to make to restrain it, will 
do well to read the latter's account of what hap- 
pened there in the second chapter of his recent 
book. But to think that the sending of a German 
warship could make things better was to repeat the 
error of judgment which had characterized "the 
ally in shining armor" speech of the German 

69 



Before the War 

Emperor to Austria when she formally annexed 
Bosnia and Herzegovina three years before. 
Instead of using diplomatic methods something 
that looked like a threat was allowed to appear, 
and the answer was Mr. Lloyd George's well- 
known declaration of July 21, 1911, in the City 
of London. The sending of the Panther, if 
intelligible, was certainly unfortunate. 

In the winter, after the actual crisis had been 
got over, there was evidence of continuing ill- 
feeling in Germany, and the suspicion in London 
did not diminish. In January, 1912, an informal 
message was given by the Emperor to Sir Ernest 
Cassel for transmission through one of my col- 
leagues to the Foreign Office.* I knew nothing of 
this at the time, but learned shortly afterward that 
it was to the effect that the Emperor was concerned 
at the state of feeling that had arisen in both coun- 
tries, and thought that the most hopeful method 
of improving matters would be that the Cabinet 
of St. James's should exchange views directly 
with the Cabinet of Berlin. For this course there 
was a good deal to be said. The peace had indeed 

* This message was the response to a memorandum which Sir 
Ernest Cassel had brought to Berlin from some influential members of 
the Cabinet in London, and it contained suggestions for the improve- 
ment of the relations between the two countries. An account of Sir 
Ernest Cassel's visit, and of what passed when he delivered his message 
from London, is given in Herr von Bethmann Hollweg's recent book. 

70 



Diplomacy Before the War 

been preserved, but, as Herr von Bethmann 
Hollweg told me later on, not without effort. The 
attitude of Germany toward France had seemed 
ominous. The British Government had done all 
it could to avert a breach, but its sympathy was 
opposed to language used in Germany, the spirit 
of which seemed to us to have in it an aggressive 
element. We did not hesitate to say what we 
thought about this. 

Even after the Agadir incident was quite 
closed, the tension between Germany arid Eng- 
land had not passed away. The military party in 
the former country began to talk of a "preven- 
tive" war pretty loudly. Even so moderate an 
organ in Berlin as the Post wrote of German 
opinion that "we all know that blood is assuredly 
about to be shed, and the longer we wait the more 
there will be. Few, however, have the courage to 
imitate Frederick the Great, and not one dares 
the deed." 

The Emperor therefore sent his message in 
the beginning of 1912, to the effect that feeling 
had become so much excited that it was not enough 
to rely on the ordinary diplomatic intercourse for 
softening it, and that he was anxious for an ex- 
change of views between the Cabinets of Berlin 
and London, of a personal and direct kind. As 

7i 



Before the War 

the result of this intimation, the British Cabinet 
decided to send one of its members to Berlin to 
hold "conversations," with a view to exploring 
and, if practicable, softening the causes of tension, 
and I was requested by the Prime Minister and 
Sir Edward Grey and my other colleagues to go 
to Berlin and undertake the task. Our Ambas- 
sador there came over to London specially to dis- 
cuss arrangements, and he returned to Berlin to 
make them before I started. 

I arrived in the German capital on February 8, 
|1912, and spent some days in interviews with the 
Emperor, the Imperial Chancellor, the Naval 
Minister (Admiral von Tirpitz), and others of the 
Emperor's Ministry. The narrative of my conver- 
sations I have extracted from the records I made 
after each interview, for the preservation so far as 
possible of the actual expressions used during it. 

My first interview was one with Herr von 
Bethmann Hollweg, the Imperial Chancellor. We 
met in the British Embassy, and the conversation, 
which was quite informal, was a full and agreeable 
one. My impression, and I still retain it, was that 
Bethmann Hollweg was then as sincerely desirous 
of avoiding war as I was myself. I told him of 
certain dangers quite frankly, and he listened and 
replied with what seemed to me to be a full under- 

>]2 



Diplomacy Before the War 

standing of our position. I said that the increasing 
action of Germany in piling up magnificent arma- 
ments was, of course, within the unfettered rights 
of the German people. But the policy had an 
inevitable consequence in the drawing together of 
other nations in the interests of their own security. 
This was what was happening. I told him frankly 
that we had made naval and military preparations, 
but only such as defense required, and as would 
be considered in Germany matter of routine. I 
went on to observe that our faces were set against 
aggression by any nation, and I told him, what 
seemed to relieve his mind, that we had no secret 
military treaties. But, I added, if France were 
attacked and an attempt made to occupy her 
territory, our neutrality must not be reckoned on 
by Germany. For one thing, it was obvious that 
our position as an island protected by the sea would 
be affected seriously if Germany had possession of 
the Channel ports on the northern shores of France. 
Again, we were under treaty obligation to come 
to the aid of Belgium in case of invasion, just as 
we were bound to defend Portugal and Japan in 
certain eventualities. In the third place, owing to 
our dependence on freedom of sea-communications 
for food and raw materials, we could not sit still 
if Germany elected to develop her fleet to such an 

73 



Before the War 

extent as to imperil our naval protection. She 
might build more ships, but we should in that case 
lay down two keels for each one she laid down. 

The Chancellor said that he did not take my 
observations at all in bad part, but I must under- 
stand that his admirals and generals were pretty 
difficult. 

I replied that the difficulty would be felt at 
least as much with the admirals and generals in my 
own country. 

The Chancellor, in the course of our talk, pro- 
posed a formula of neutrality to which I will refer 
later on. 

I left the Chancellor with the sense that I had 
been talking with an honest man struggling some- 
what with adversity. However, next day I was 
summoned to luncheon with the Emperor and 
Empress at the Schloss, and afterward had a long 
interview, which lasted nearly three hours, with the 
Emperor and Admiral von Tirpitz in the Em- 
peror's cabinet room. The conversation was 
mainly in German, and was confined to naval ques- 
tions. My reception by the Emperor was very 
agreeable; that by Tirpitz seemed to me a little 
strained. The question was, whether Germany 
must not continue her program for expanding her 
fleet. What that program really amounted to we 

74 



Diplomacy Before the War 

had not known in London, except that it included 
an increase in battleships; but the Emperor handed 
me at this meeting a confidential copy of the draft 
of the proposed new Fleet Law, with an intimation 
that he had no objection to my communicating 
it privately to my colleagues. I was careful to 
abstain even from looking at it then, for I saw 
that, from its complexity and bulk, it would 
require careful study. So I simply put it in my 
pocket. But I repeated what I had said to the 
Chancellor, that the necessity for secure sea- 
communications rendered it vital for us to be 
able to protect ourselves on the seas. Germany 
was quite free to do as she pleased, but so were 
we, and we should probably lay down two keels I 
for every one which she added to her program. 
The initiative in slackening competition was really 
not with us, but with Germany. Any agreement 
for settling our differences and introducing a new 
spirit into the relations of the two nations would 
be bones without flesh if Germany began by fresh 
shipbuilding, and so forced us to do twice as much. 
Indeed, the world would laugh at such an agree- 
ment, and our people would think that we had 
been fooled. I did not myself take that view, 
because I thought that the mere fact of an agree- 
ment was valuable. But the Emperor would see 

75 



Before the War 

that the public would attach very little import- 
ance to his action unless the agreement largely 
modified what it believed to be his shipbuilding 
program. 

We then discussed the proposal of the German 
Admiralty for the new program. Admiral von 
Tirpitz struggled for it. I insisted that funda- 
mental modification was essential if better relations 
were to ensue. The tone was friendly, but I felt 
that I was up against the crucial part of my task. 
The admiral wanted us to enter into some under- 
standing about our own shipbuilding. He thought 
the Two-Power standard a hard one for Germany, 
and, indeed, Germany could not make any admis- 
sion about it. 

I said it was not matter for admission. They 
were free and so were we, and we must for the 
sake of our safety remain so. The idea then 
occurred to us that, as we should never agree about 
it, we should avoid trying to define a standard pro- 
portion in any general agreement that we might 
come to, and, indeed, say nothing in it about 
shipbuilding; but that the Emperor should an- 
nounce to the German public that the agreement 
on general questions, if we should have concluded 
one, had entirely modified his wish for the new 
Fleet Law, as originally conceived, and that it 

76 



Diplomacy Before the War 

should be delayed, and future shipbuilding should 
at least be spread over a longer period. 

The Emperor thought such an agreement 
would certainly make a great difference, and he 
informed me that his Chancellor would propose to 
me a formula as a basis for it. I said that I would 
see the Chancellor and discuss a possible formula, 
as well as territorial and other questions with him, 
and would then return to London and report to 
the King (from whom I had brought him a special 
and friendly message) and to my colleagues the 
good disposition I had found, and leave the 
difficulties about shipbuilding and indeed all other 
matters to their judgment. For I had come to 
Berlin, not to make an actual agreement, but only I 
to explore the ground for one with the Emperor I 
and his ministers. I had been struck with the ' 
friendly disposition in Berlin, and a not less 
friendly disposition would be found in London. 

The evening after my interview with the 
Emperor I dined with the Chancellor. I met there 
and talked with several prominent politicians, 
soldiers, and men of letters, including Kiderlen- 
Waechter (the then Foreign Secretary), the after- 
ward famous General von Hindenburg, Zimmer- 
mann of the Foreign Office, and Professor 
Harnack. 

77 



Before the War 

Later on, after dinner, I went off to meet the 
French Ambassador, M. Jules Cambon, at the 
British Embassy, for I wished to keep him 
informed of our object, which was simply to 
improve the state of feeling between London and 
Berlin, but on the basis, and only on the basis, of 
complete loyalty to our Entente with France. It 
was, to use a phrase which he himself suggested 
in our conversation, a detente rather than an 
entente that I had in view, with possible develop- 
ments to follow it which might assume a form 
which would be advantageous to France and 
Russia, as well as to ourselves and Germany. He 
showed me next day the report of our talk which 
he had prepared in order to telegraph it to Paris. 

I had other interviews the next day, but the 
only one which is important for the purposes of 
the present narrative is that at my final meeting 
• with the German Chancellor on the Saturday 
, (February 10). I pressed on him how important 
it was for public opinion and the peace of the 
world that Germany should not force us into a 
shipbuilding competition with her, a competition 
in which it was certain that we should have to spare 
no effort to preserve our margin of safety by 
greater increases. 

He did not controvert my suggestion. I could 

78 




M. PAUL CAMBON 

FRENCH AMBASSADOR TO GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1898. 



Diplomacy Before the War 

see that personally he was of the same mind. But I 
he said that the forces he had to contend with were 
almost insuperable. The question of a retardation 
of building under the proposed Fleet Law was not 
susceptible of being treated apart from that of the 
formula of which he and the Emperor had both 
spoken. He suggested that we might agree on the 
following formula: 

1. The High Contracting 1 Powers assure each other 
mutually of their desire for peace and friendship. 

2. They will not, either of them, make any combina- 
tion, or join in any combination, which is directed against 
the other. They expressly declare that they are not 
bound by any such combination. 

3. If either of the High Contracting Parties become 
entangled in a war with one or more other powers, the 
other of the High Contracting Parties will at least observe 
toward the power so entangled a benevolent neutrality, 
and use its utmost endeavor for the localization of the 
conflict. 

4. The duty of neutrality which arises from the pre- 
ceding article has no application in so far as it may not 
be reconcilable with existing agreements which the High 
Contracting Parties have already made. The making of 
new agreements which make it impossible for either of 
the Contracting Parties to observe neutrality toward the 
other beyond what is provided by the preceding limita- 
tions is excluded in conformity with the provisions con- 
tained in Article 2. 

79 



Before the War 

Anxious as I was to agree with the Chancellor, 
who seemed as keen as I was to meet me with ex- 
pressions which I might take back to England for 
friendly consideration, I was unable to hold out to 
him the least prospect that we could accept the 
draft formula which he had just proposed. Under 
Article 2, for example, we should find ourselves, 
were it accepted, precluded from coming to the 
assistance of France should Germany attack her 
and aim at getting possession of such ports as Dun- 
kirk, Calais, and Boulogne, a friendly occupation 
of which was so important for our island security. 
Difficulties might also arise which would hamper 
us in the discharge of our existing treaty obligations 
to Belgium, Portugal, and Japan. The most 
hopeful way out was to revise the draft funda- 
mentally by confining its terms to an undertaking 
by each Y'ower not to make any unprovoked attack 
upon the other, or join in any combination or design 
against the other for purposes of aggression, or 
become party to any plan or naval or military com- 
bination, alone or in conjunction with any other 
Power, directed to such an end. 

He and I then sat down and redrafted what he 
had prepared, on this basis, but without his 
committing himself to the view that it would be 
sufficient. We also had a satisfactory conversation 

80 



Diplomacy Before the War 

about the Bagdad Railway and other things in 
Turkey connected with the Persian Gulf, and we / 
discussed possibilities of the rearrangement of 
certain interests of both Powers in Africa. He 
said to me that he was not there to make any 
immediate bargain, but that we should look at the 
African question on both sides from a high point 
of view, and that if we had any difficulties we should 
tell him, and he would see whether he could get 
round them for us. 

I replied that I also was not there to make a 
bargain, but only to explore the ground, and that 
I much appreciated the tone of his conversation' 
with me, and the good feeling he had shown. I 
should go back to London and without delay report 
to my colleagues all that had passed. 

I entertain no doubt that the German Chan- 
cellor was sincerely in earnest in what he said to 
me on these occasions, and in his desire to improve 
relations with us and keep the peace. So I think 
was the Emperor; but he was pulled at by his 
naval and military advisers, and by the powerful, 
if then small, chauvinist party in Germany. In 
1912, when the conversations recorded took place, 
this party was less potent, I think a good deal less, 
than it appears to have become a year and a half 
later, when Germany had increased her army still 

81 



Before the War 






further. But I formed the opinion even then that 
the power of the Emperor in Germany was a good 
deal misinterpreted and overestimated. My im- 
pression was that the really decisive influence was 
that of the Minister who had managed to 
secure the strongest following throughout Ger- 
many; and it was obvious to me that Admiral von 
Tirpitz had a powerful and growing following 
from many directions, due to the backing of the 
naval party. 

Moreover, sensible as a large number of 
Germans were, there was a certain tendency to 
swelled-headedness in the nation. It had had an 
extraordinarily rapid development, based on prin- 
ciples of organization in every sphere of activity — 
principles derived from the lesson of the necessity 
of thinking before acting enjoined by the great 
teachers of the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. The period down to about 1832 seems to 
me to correspond, in the intellectual prodigies it 
produced, to our Elizabethan period. It came no 
doubt to an end in its old and distinctive aspect. 
But its spirit assumed, later on, a new form, that 
of organization for material ends based on careful 
reflection and calculation. In industry, in com- 
merce, in the army, and in the navy, the work of 
mind was everywhere apparent. ff Aus einem 

82 



Diplomacy Before the War 

Lernvolk wollen wir ein Thatvolk voerden" was the 
new watchword. 

No doubt there was much that was defective. 
When it came to actual war in 1914, it turned out 
that Germany had not adequately thought out her 
military problems. If she had done so, she would 
have used her fleet at the very outset, and particu- 
larly her destroyers and submarines, to try to 
hinder the transport of the British Expeditionary 
Force to France, and, having secured the absence 
of this force, she would have sought to seize the 
northern ports of France. Small as the Expedi- 
tionary Force was, it was enough, when added to 
the French armies, to make them so formidable as 
to render the success of von Kluck uncertain if the 
troops could be concentrated to resist him swiftly 
enough. Again, Germany never really grasped 
the implications of our command of the sea. Had 
she done so, I do not think she would have adven- 
tured war. She may have counted on England not 
coming in, owing to entanglements in Irish diffi- 
culties. If so, this was just another instance of • 
her bad judgment about the internal affairs of! 
other nations. 

In fine, Germany had not adequately thought 
out or prepared for the perils which she undertook 
when she assumed the risks of the war of 1914. 

83 



Before the War 

No doubt she knew more about the shortcomings 
of the Russian army than did the French or the 
British. On these, pretty exact knowledge of the 
Russian shortages enabled her to reckon. There 
we miscalculated more than she did. But she was 
not strong enough to make sure work of a brief 
but conclusive campaign in the West, which was 
all she could afford while Russia was organizing. 
Then, later on, she ought to have seen that, if the 
submarine campaign which she undertook should 
bring the United States into the war, her ultimate 
fate would be sealed by blockade. In the end she 
no doubt fought magnificently. But she made 
these mistakes, which were mainly due to that 
swelled-headedness which deflected her reasoning 
and prevented her from calculating consequences 
aright. 

There was a good deal of this apparent even in 
1912. It had led to the Agadir business in the 
previous summer, and the absence of wise prevision 
was still apparent. I believed that this phase of 
militarism would pass when Imperial Germany 
became a more mature nation. Indeed, it was 
passing under the growing influence of Social 
Democracy, which was greatly increased by the 
elections which took place while I was in Berlin 

84 



Diplomacy Before the War 

in 1912.* But still there was the possibility of an 
explosion; and when I returned to London, 
altho I was full of hope that relations between 
the two countries were going to be improved, and 
told my colleagues so, I also reported that there \ 
were three matters about which I was uneasy. 

The first was my strong impression that the 
new Fleet Law would be insisted on. 

The second was the possibility that Tirpitz 
might be made Chancellor of the Empire in place 
of Bethmann Hollweg. This was being talked of 
as possible when I was in Berlin. 

The third was the want of continuity in the 
supreme direction of German policy. Foreign 
policy especially was under divided control. Von 
Tschirsky observed to me in 1906 that what he 
had been saying about a question we were discuss- 
ing represented his view as Foreign Minister of 

* An anecdote illustrating the change that was coming over po- 
litical opinion in Germany in 1912, may be worth relating. I was 
present at a supper party, given by one of the professors in a well- 
known German University town, in Slay of that year. I asked him 
whether the old Conservative member who had for long represented 
the town had been again returned. "Pieturned ! no," he replied. "It 
was impossible to return a man of moderate opinions. We only 
escaped a Social Democrat by a few votes. We managed to get 
enough of the popular vote to return a fairly sensible railway servant 
for this University town." I inquired what party he belonged to. "No 
old party," was his answer, "and it will interest you to know that his 
program was an English one: "Lloyd Oeorgianismus." I then in- 
quired what was his text book. "Die Reden von Lloyd George," was 
the answer. Did it contain anything about a place called Lime- 
house? "Limhaus, ach ja; das war eine vortrefjliche Rede!" 

85 



Before the War 

Prussia, but that next door was the Chancellor, 
who might express quite a different view to me 
if I asked him; and that if, later on, I went to 
the end of the Wilhelmstrasse and turned down 
Unter den Linden I would come to the Schloss, 
where I might derive from the Emperor's lips an 
impression quite different from that given by either 
himself or the Chancellor. This made me feel that, 
desirous as Bethmann Hollweg had shown himself 
to establish and preserve good relations, we could 
not count on his influence being maintained or 
prevailing. As an eminent foreign diplomatist 
observed, "In this highly organized nation, when 
you have ascended to the very top story you find 
not only confusion but chaos." 

However, after I had reported fully on all the 
details and the Foreign Office had received my 
written report, matters were taken in hand by Sir 
Edward Grey, and by him I was kept informed. 
Presently it became apparent that there were those 
in Berlin who were interfering with the Chancellor 
in his efforts for good relations. A dispatch came 
which was inconsistent with the line he had pursued 
with me, and it became evident that the German 
Government was likely to insist on proceeding with 
the new Fleet Law. When we looked closely into 
the copy of the draft which the Emperor had given 

86 




© International 



VISCOUNT GREY OF FALLODON 

SECRETARY OP STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS FROM 1905 TO 1916. 



Diplomacy Before the War, 

to me, we found very large increases contemplated, 
of which we had no notion earlier, not only in the 
battleships, about which we did know before, but 
in small craft and submarines and personnel. As 
these increases were to proceed further, discussion 
about the terms of a formula became rather futile, 
and we had only one course left open to us — to 
respond by quietly increasing our navy and con- 
centrating its strength in northern seas. This 
was done with great energy by Mr. Churchill, the 
result being that, as the outcome of the successive 
administrations of the fleet by Mr. McKenna and 
himself, the estimates were raised by over twenty 
millions sterling to fifty-one millions. 

In the summer of 1912 I became Lord Chan- 
cellor, and the engrossing duties, judicial as well 
as administrative, of that office cut me off from any 
direct participation in the carrying on of our efforts 
for better relations with Germany. But these 
relations continued to be extended in the various 
ways practicable and left open to Sir Edward ,Grey 
and the German Chancellor. The discussions which 
had been begun when I was in Berlin, about Africa 
and the Bagdad Railway, were continued between 
them through the Ambassadors; and just before 
the war the draft of an extensive treaty had been 
agreed on. 

87 



Before the War 

Then, after an interval of two years, came a 
time of extreme anxiety. No one had better 
opportunities than I of watching Sir Edward's 
concentration of effort to avoid the calamity which 
threatened. For he was living with me in my 
house in Queen Anne's Gate through the whole of 
these weeks, and he was devoting himself, with 
passionate earnestness of purpose, to inducing the 
German Government to use its influence with 
Austria for a peaceful settlement. But it presently 
became evident that the Emperor and his Ministers 
had made up their minds that they were going to 
make use of an opportunity that appeared to have 
come. As I have already said, I think their cal- 
culations were framed on a wholly erroneous basis. 
It is clear that their military advisers had failed to 
take account, in their estimates of probabilities, of 
the tremendous moral forces that might be brought 
into action against them. The ultimate result we 
all know. May the lesson taught to the world by 
the determined entry of the United States into the 
conflict between right and wrong never be for- 
gotten by the world ! 

Why Germany acted as she did then is a matter 
that still requires careful investigation. My own 
feeling is that she has demonstrated the extreme 
risk of confiding great political decisions to mili- 

88 



Diplomacy Before the War 

tary advisers. It is not their business to have the 
last word in deciding between peace and war. The 
problem is too far-reaching for their training. Bis- 
marck knew this well, and often said it, as students 
of his life and reflections are aware. Had he been 
at the helm I do not believe that he would have 
allowed his country to drift into a disastrous course. 
He was far from perfect in his ethical standards, 
but he had something of that quality which Momm- 
sen, in his history, attributes to Julius Caesar. Him 
the historian describes as one of those "mighty 
ones who has preserved to the end of his career the 
statesman's tact of discriminating between the 
possible and the impossible, and has not broken 
down in the task which for greatly gifted natures 
is the most difficult of all — the task of recognizing, 
when on the pinnacle of success, its natural limits. 
What was possible he performed, and never left 
the possible good undone for the sake of the im- 
possible better; never disdained at least to mitigate 
by palliatives evils that were incurable. But where 
he recognized that fate had spoken, he always 
obeyed. Alexander on the Hypanis, Napoleon at 
Moscow, turned back because they were compelled 
to do so, and were indignant at destiny for bestow- 
ing even on its favorites merely limited successes. 
Csesar turned back voluntarily on the Thames and 

8 9 



Before the War 

on the Rhine, and thought of carrying into effe( 
even at the Danube and the Euphrates, not un- 
bounded plans of world-conquest, but merely well- 
considered frontier regulations." 

If only .Germany, whose great historian thus 
explained these things, had remembered them, 
how different might have been her position to-day. 
But it may be that she had carried her policy too 
far to be left free. With her certainly rests the 
main responsibility for what has happened; for 
apart from her, Austria would not have acted as she 
did, nor would Turkey, nor Bulgaria. The fas- 
cinating glitter of her armies, and the assurances 
given by her General Staff, were too much for the 
minor nations whom she had induced to accept her 
guidance, and too much I think also for her own 
people. No doubt the ignorance of these about 
the ways of their own Government counted for a 
great deal. There has never been such a justifica- 
tion of the principle of democratic control as this 
war affords. But a nation must be held responsible 
for the action of its own rulers, however much 
it has simply submitted itself to them. I have 
the impression that even to-day in its misery the 
German public does not fully understand, and still 
believes that Germany was the victim of a plot 
to entrap and encircle her, and that with this in 

90 



Diplomacy Before the War 

view Russia mobilized on a great scale for war. It 
is difficult for us to understand how real the Slav 
peril appeared to Germany and to Austria, and 
there is little doubt that to the latter Serbia was an 
unquiet neighbor. But these considerations must 
be taken in their context — a context of which the 
German public ought to have made itself fully 
aware. The leaders of its opinion were bent on 
domination to the Near East. No wonder that 
the Slavs in the Balkan Peninsula became progres- 
sively alarmed, and looked to Russia more and 
more for protection. For it had become plain that 
moral considerations would not be allowed by 
the authorities at Berlin to weigh in the balance 
against material advantages to be gained by power 
of domination. 

If there is room for reproach to us Anglo- 
Saxons, it is reproach of a very different kind. 
Germany was quite intelligent enough to listen to 
reason, and, besides, she had the prospect of 
becoming the dominating industrial and com- 
mercial power in the world by dint merely of 
peaceful penetration. It is possible that, if her 
relations with her Western neighbors, including 
Great Britain, had been more intimate than they 
actually were, she might have been saved from a 
great blunder, and might have come to understand 

9i 



Before the War 

that the English-speaking races were not really so 
inferior to herself as she took them to be. Her 
hubiis was in part, at all events, the result of 
ignorance. Speaking for my own countrymen, I 
think that neither did we know enough about the 
Germans nor did the Germans know enough about 
us. They were ignorant of the innate capacity for 
fighting, in industrial and military conflicts alike, 
which our history shows we have always hitherto 
brought to light in great emergencies. And 
they little realized how tremendously moral issues 
could stir and unite democracies. We, on the 
other hand, knew little of their tradition, their 
literature, or their philosophy. Our statesmen 
did not read their newspapers, and rarely visited 
their country. We were deficient in that quality 
which President Murray Butler has spoken of as 
the "international mind." 

I do not know whether, had it been otherwise, 
we could have brought about the better state of 
things in Europe for which I tried to express the 
hope, altho not without misgiving, in the 
address on "Higher Nationality" which I was 
privileged to deliver before distinguished repre- 
sentatives of the United States and of Canada at 
Montreal on September 1, 1913. I spoke then of 

92 



Diplomacy Before the War 

the possibility of a larger entente, an entente which 
might become a real concert of the Great Powers 
of the world; and I quoted the great prayer with 
which Grotius concludes his book on "War and 
Peace." There was at least the chance, if we 
strove hard enough, that we might find a response 
from the best in other countries, and in the end 
attain to a new and real Sittliclikeit which should 
provide a firmer basis for International Law and 
reverence for international obligations. But for 
the realization of this dream a sustained and 
strenuous search after fuller mutual knowledge 
was required. 

After this address had been published, I 
received a letter from the German Chancellor, 
Bethmann Hollweg, in which — writing in German 
and so late as September 26, 1913 — he expressed 
himself to me as follows: 

"If I had the happiness of finding myself in one mind with 
you in these thoughts in February, 1912, it has been to me a 
still greater satisfaction that our two countries have since 
then had a number of opportunities of working together in 
this spirit. Like you, I hold the optimistic view that the great 
nations will be able to progress further on this path, and will 
do so. Anyhow, I shall, in so far as it is within my power, 
devote my energies to this cause, and I am happy in the 
certainty of finding in you an openly declared fellow-worker." 

93 



Before the War 

But events swept him from a course which, so 
far as I know, he at least individually desired to 
follow. The great increase of armaments took 
place that year in Germany, and, when events 
were too strong for him, he elected, not to resign, 
but to throw in his lot with his country. His 
position was one of great difficulty. He took a 
course for which many would applaud him. But 
inherently a wrong course, surely. What he said 
when Belgium was invaded in breach of solemn 
treaty shows that he felt this. He let himself be 
swept into devoting his energies to bolstering up 
his country's cause, instead of resigning. His 
career only proves that, given the political con- 
ditions that obtained in Germany shortly before 
the war, it was almost impossible for a German 
statesman to keep his feet or to avoid being untrue 
to himself. And yet there were many others there 
in the same frame of mind, and one asks oneself 
whether, had they had more material to work with, 
they might not have been able to present a more 
attractive alternative than the notion of military 
domination which in the end took possession of all, 
from the Emperor downward. 

It is, however, useless to speculate at present 
on these things. We know too little of the facts. 
The historians of another generation will know 

94 



Diplomacy Before the War 

more. But of one thing I feel sure. The Germans 
think that Great Britain declared war of pre- 
conceived purpose and her own initiative. There 
is a sense in which she did. The opinion of Mr. 
Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, and of those of us 
who were by their side, was unhesitating. She 
could not have taken any other course than she did 
without the prospect of ruin and failure to enter 
on the only path of honor. For honor and 
safety alike necessitated that she should take, 
without the delay which would have been fatal, the 
step she did take without delay and unswervingly. 
The responsibility for her entry comes back wholly 
to Germany herself, who would not have brought 
it about had she not plunged into war. And 
to-day Germany lies prostrate. 

But she is not dead. I do not think that for 
generations to come she will dream of building 
again on military foundations. Her people have 
had a lesson in the overwhelming forces which are 
inevitably called into action where there is brutal 
indifference to the moral rights of others. What 
remains to her is that which she has inherited and 
preserved of the results of the great advancement 
in knowledge which began under the inspiration 
of Lessing and Kant, and culminated in the teach- 
ing of Goethe and Schiller and of the thinkers who 

95 



Before the War 

were their contemporaries. That movement only 
came to a partial end in 1832. No doubt its 
character changed after that. The idealists in 
poetry, music, and philosophy gave place to great 
men of science, to figures such as those of Ludwig 
and Liebig, of Gauss, Riemann, and Helmholtz. 
There came also historians like Ranke and Momm- 
sen, musicians like Wagner, philosophers like 
Schopenhauer and Lotze, a statesman like Bis- 
marck. To-day there are few men of great stature 
in Germany; there are, indeed, few men of genius 
anywhere in the world. But Germany still has a 
high general level in science, and of recent years 
she has produced great captains of industry. The 
gift for organization founded on principle, and for 
applying science to practical uses, was there before 
the war, and it is very unsafe to assume that it is 
not there in a latent form to-day. If it is, 
Germany will be heard of again with a field of 
activity that probably will not include devotion to 
military affairs in the old way. Against her com- 
petition of this other kind, formidable as soon as 
she has recovered from her misery, we must 
prepare ourselves in the only way that can succeed 
in the long run. We, too, must study and 
organize on the basis of widely diffused exact 
knowledge, and not less of high ethical standards. 

96 



Diplomacy Before the War 

I think, if I read the signs of the times aright, 
that people are coming to realize this, both in 
the United States and throughout the British 
Empire. 



97 



THE GERMAN ATTITUDE BEFORE 
THE WAR 




© Press Illustrating Service 

CHANCELLOR THEOBALD VON BETHMANN-HOLLWEG 

CHANCELLOR OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE AND MINISTER OF STATE FOR 
FOREIGN AFFAIRS FROM 1909 TO 1917. 



CHAPTER III 

THE GERMAN ATTITUDE BEFORE THE WAR 

We now have before us the considered opinions of 
Herr von Bethmann Hollweg, the late Imperial 
Chancellor, and of Admiral von Tirpitz, the 
Minister who did much to develop the naval power 
of Germany, about the origin and significance of 
the war. Both have written books on the subject.* 
It is to be desired that in the case of each of these 
authors his book should be studied in English- 
speaking countries as well as on the Continent. 
For it is important that the Anglo-Saxon world 
should understand the divergences in policy which 
the two books disclose, not less than the points of 
agreement. That world has suffered in the past 
from failure to understand Germany, while the 
German world has displayed a total inability to 
interpret aright the Anglo-Saxon disposition. 
When I speak of two worlds I mean the governing 
classes of these worlds. The nations themselves, 

* "Betrachtnngen zum Weltkriege," Th. von Bethmann Hollweg. 
"Erinnerungen," Alfred von Tirpitz. Both translated into English 
under the Titles: "Reflections on the World War," and "My 
Memoirs." 

101 



Before the War 

taken as aggregates of individual citizens, by a 
probable maj ority in each case, desired the continu- 
ance of peace and of the prosperity of which it is 
the condition. So, of course, did the rulers, those 
in Germany as much as those in London. But the 
German rulers had a theory of how to secure peace 
which was the outcome of the abstract mind that 
was their inheritance. It was the theory that was 
wrong, a theory of which Anglo- S ax ondom knew 
little, and which it would have rejected decisively 
had it realized its tendency. This theory is de- 
scribed in Admiral Tirpitz's book, with an account 
of the efforts made to indoctrinate with it the 
people of Germany. 

The two volumes are profoundly interesting. 
For in that of Admiral Tirpitz we have the doctrine 
set forth that in the end led to the war. In that 
written by the late Imperial Chancellor we have 
quite another principle laid down as the one which 
he was endeavoring to apply in his direction of 
German policy. But in this endeavor he failed. 
The school of Tirpitz in the main prevailed, and 
this was the more easy, inasmuch as it was simply 
continuing the policy which had been advocated by 
a noisy section of Germans, nearly without a 
break, since the days of Frederick the Great. It 
was a policy which had in reality outlived the days 

1 02 



The German Attitude 

in which it was practicable. The world had become 
too crowded and too small to permit of any one 
Power asserting its right to jostle its way where it 
pleased without regard to its neighbors. An affair 
of police on a colossal scale had begun to look as 
if it would ensue, and ensue it ultimately did. No 
doubt had we all been cleverer we might have been 
able to explain to Germany whither she was head- 
ing. But we did not understand her, least of all 
our chauvinists, nor did she understand us. In the 
main what she really wanted was to develop herself 
by the application of her talent for commerce and 
industry. To her success in attaining this end we 
had no objection, provided her procedure was 
decent and in order. But she chose a means to her 
end which was becoming progressively more and 
more inadmissible. Tirpitz describes the illegiti- 
mate means. Bethmann Hollweg describes the 
legitimate end. Tirpitz thinks Bethmann Hollweg 
was a weakling because he would not back up the 
means. Bethmann Hollweg, firm in his faith that 
the end was legitimate and thinking of this alone, 
dwells on it with little reference to what his col- 
league was about. His accusation against the 
Entente Powers is that, at the instigation of Russia 
primarily, and in a less degree of France, they set 
themselves to ring round and crush Germany. It 

103 



Before the War 

was really, he believes, a war of aggression, and 
England was ultimately responsible for it. With- 
out her co-operation it was impossible, and 
altho she did not enter into any formal military 
alliance for the purpose, she began in the time of 
Edward VII. a policy of close friendship which 
enabled Russia and France in the end to reckon 
on her as morally bound to help. It was easy for 
these Powers to represent as a defensive war what 
was really a war of aggression. Such was truly its 
nature, and England decided to join in it, actually 
because she was jealous of Germany's growing 
success in the world, and was desirous of setting a 
check to it. 

Such is Herr von Bethmann Hollweg's ex- 
planation. He is, I have no doubt, sincerely 
convinced of its truth, and he explains the grounds 
of his conviction in detail and with much ability. 
But there is a fallacy in his reasoning which 
becomes transparent when one reads along with his 
book that of his colleague. If we put out of sight 
the deep feeling awakened here by the brutality 
of the invasion of Belgium, to which violation of 
Treaty obligations the former declares that Ger- 
many was compelled by military considerations that 
were unanswerable, and look at the history of 
Anglo-German relations before the war, the 

104 



The German Attitude 

inference is irresistible that it was not the object of 
developing in a peaceful atmosphere German com- 
merce and industry that England objected to. Such 
a development might have been formidable for 
us. It would have compelled great efforts on our 
part to improve the education of our people and our 
organization for peaceful enterprises. But it would 
have been legitimate. The objection of this country 
was directed against quite other things that were 
being done by Germany in order to attain her 
purpose. The essence of these was the attempt to 
get her way by creating armaments which should 
in effect place her neighbors at her mercy. We 
who live on islands, and are dependent for our food 
and our raw materials on our being able to protect 
their transport and with it ourselves from in- 
vasion, could not permit the -sea-protection which 
had been recognized from generation to generation 
as a necessity for our preservation to be threatened 
by the creation of naval forces intended to make it 
precarious. As the navies of Europe were growing, 
not only those of France and Russia, but the navy 
of Italy also, we had to look, in the interests of our 
security, to friendly relations with these countries. 
We aimed at establishing such friendly relations, 
and our method was to get rid of all causes of 
friction, in Newfoundland, in Egypt, in the East, 

105 



Before the War 

and in the Mediterranean. That was the policy 
which was implied in our Ententes. We were not 
willing to enter into militarj^ alliances and we did 
not do so. Our policy was purely a business policy, 
and everything else was consequential on this, 
including the growing sense of common interests 
and of the desire for the maintenance of peace. I 
do not think that Admiral Tirpitz wanted actual 
war. But he did want power to enforce submission 
to the expansion of Germany at her will. And this 
power was his means to the end which was what 
less Prussianized minds in Germany contemplated 
as attainable in less objectionable ways. Such a 
means he could not fashion in the form of strength 
in sea power which would have placed us at his 
mercy, without arousing our instinct for self- 
preservation. 

All this the late Imperial Chancellor in sub- 
stance ignores. The fact is that he can only defend 
his theory on the hypothesis that no such policy as 
that of his colleague was on foot, and that the truth 
was that France, Russia, and England had come 
to a decision to take the initiative in a policy em- 
bracing, for France revenge for the loss of Alsace 
and Lorraine, for Russia the acquisition of Con- 
stantinople with domination over the Balkans and 
the Bosporus, and for England the destruction of 

1 06 



The German Attitude 

German commerce. If this hypothesis be not true, 
and the real explanation of the alarm of the Entente 
Powers was the policy exemplified by Tirpitz and 
the other exponents of .German militarism, then 
the whole of the reasoning in Herr von Bethmann 
Hollweg's book falls to the ground. 

It may be asked how it was possible that two 
members of the Imperial Government should have 
been pursuing in the same period two policies 
wholly inconsistent with each other. The answer 
is not difficult. The direction of affairs in Ger- 
many was admirably organized for some purposes 
and very badly for others. Her autocratic system 
lent itself to efficiency in the preparation of arma- 
ments. But it was not really a system under which 
her Emperor was left free to guide policy. There 
is no greater mistake made than that under which 
it is popularly supposed that the Emperor was 
absolute master. The development in recent years 
of the influence of the General and Admiral 
Staffs, which was a necessity from the point of 
view of modern organization for war but required 
keeping in careful check from other points of view, 
had produced forces which the Emperor was power- 
less to hold in. Even in Bismarck's time readers 
of his "Reflections and Recollections" will re- 
member how he felt the embarrassment of his 

107 



Before the War 

foreign policy caused by the growing and deflecting 
influences of Moltke, and even of his friend Roon. 
And there was no Bismarck to hold the Staffs 
in check for reasons of expediency in the years 
before 1914. The military mind when it is highly 
developed is dangerous. It sees only its own bit, 
but this it sees with great clearness, and in con- 
sequence becomes very powerful. There is only 
one way of holding it to its legitimate function, 
and that is by the supremacy of public opinion in 
a Parliament as its final exponent. Parliaments 
may be clumsy and at times ignorant. But they 
do express, it may be vaguely, but yet sufficiently, 
the sense of the people at large. Now, notwith- 
standing all that had been done to educate them up 
to it, I do not think that the people at large in 
Germany had ever endorsed the implications of the 
policy of German militarism. The Social Demo- 
crats certainly had not. They ought, I think, to 
be judged even now by what they said before the 
war, and not by what some, tho not all of 
them, said when it was pressed on them in 1914 
that Germany had to fight for her life. Had she 
possessed a true Parliamentary system for a gen- 
eration before the war there would probably have 
been no war. What has happened to her is a 
vindication of Democracy as the best political 

1 08 



The German Attitude 

system despite certain drawbacks which attach 
to it. 

The great defect of the German Imperial system 
was that, unless the Emperor was strong enough 
to impose his will on his advisers, he was largely 
at their mercy. Had they been chosen by the 
people, the people and not the Emperor would 
have borne the responsibility, if the views of these 
advisers diverged from their own. But they were 
chosen by the Emperor, and chosen in varying 
moods as to policy. The result was that, excellent 
as were the departments at their special work in 
most cases, on general policy there was no guaran- 
tee for unity of mind. The Emperor lived amid a 
sea of conflicting opinions. The Chancellor might 
have one idea, the Foreign Secretary, a Prussian 
and not Imperial Minister, a different one, the 
Chief of the General Staff a third, the War 
•Minister a fourth, and the Head of the Admiralty a 
fifth. Thus the Kaiser was constantly being pulled 
at from different sides, and whichever Minister had 
the most powerful combination at his back 
generally got the best of the argument. Were the 
Kaiser in an impulsive mood he might side now 
with one and again with another, and the result 
would necessarily be confusion. Moreover, he had 
constantly to fix one eye on public opinion in 

109 



Before the War 

Germany, and another on public opinion abroad. 
It is therefore not surprising that Germany seemed 
to foreigners a strange and unintelligible country, 
and that sudden manifestations of policy were 
made which shocked us here, accustomed as we 
were to something quite different. Neither our 
pacifists nor our chauvinists really succeeded in 
diagnosing Germany. On the other hand, we our- 
selves were a standing puzzle to the Germans. 
They could not understand how Government 
could be conducted in the absence of abstract 
principles exactly laid down. And because our 
democratic system was one of choosing our rulers 
and trusting them with a large discretion within 
limits, the Germans always suspected that this 
system, with which they were unfamiliar, covered 
a device for concealing hidden policies. I wrote 
in some detail about this in an address delivered 
at Oxford in the autumn of 1911, and afterward 
published in a little volume called "Universities 
and National Life." 

The war has not altered the views to which I 
had then come. 

But it was not really so on either side, and it is 
deplorable that the two nations knew so little of 
each other. For I believe that the German sys- 
tem, wholly unadapted as it was to the modern 

no 



The German Attitude 

spirit, was bound to become modified before long, 
and had we shown more skill and more zeal in ex- 
plaining ourselves, we should probably have 
accelerated the process of German acceptance of 
the true tendencies of the age. But our states- 
men took little trouble to get first-hand knowledge 
of the genesis of what appeared to them to be the 
German double dose of original sin, and, on the 
other hand, our chauvinists were studied in Ger- 
many out of all proportion to their small number 
and influence. Thus the Berlin politicians got the 
wrong notions to which their tradition predis- 
posed them. I believe that Herr von Bethmann 
Hollweg was himself really more enlightened, but 
he could not control the admirals and generals, 
or the economists or historians or professors whom 
the admirals and generals were always trying to 
enlist on the side of the doctrine of Weltmacht 
oder Niedergang. Under these circumstances 
all that seemed possible was to try to influence 
German opinion, and at the same time to insure 
against the real risk of failure to accomplish this 
before it was too late. 

In order to make this view of German condi- 
tions intelligible, it will be convenient in the first 
place to give some account of Herr von Bethmann 
Hollweg's opinions as expressed in his book, and 

m 



Before the War 

afterward to contrast them with the views of his 
powerful colleague, Admiral von Tirpitz. 

The ex-Imperial Chancellor commences his 
"Betrachtungen %um Welikriege" by going 
back to the day when he assumed office. When 
Prince Biilow handed over the reins to him in 
July, 1909, the Prince gave him his views on what, 
in the attitude of England, had been causing the 
former much concern. We are not told what he 
actually said, but we can guess it, for Bethmann 
Hollweg goes on to indicate the origin of the cause 
of anxiety. It was King Edward's "encircle- 
ment" policy. It might well be that the late King 
had no desire for war. But the result of the policy 
for which he and the Ministers behind him stood 
was, so he believes, that, in all differences of 
opinion as to external policy, Germany found 
England, France, and Russia solidly against her, 
and was conscious of a continuous attempt to lead 
Italy away from the Triple Alliance. "People 
may call this 'Einkreisung, 3 or policy of the 
balance of power, or whatever they like. The 
object and the achievement resulted in the found- 
ing of a group of nations of great power, whose 
purpose was to hinder Germany at least by dip- 
lomatic means in the free development of her 
growing strength." Sir Edward Grey, when 

112 



The German Attitude 

taking over the conduct of foreign policy in 1905, 
had declared that he would continue the policy of 
the late Government. He hoped for improved 
relations with Russia, and even for more satisfac- 
tory relations with Germany, provided always that 
in the latter case these did not interfere with the 
friendship between England and France. This, 
says Bethmann Hollweg, had been the theme of 
English policy since the end of the days of 
"splendid isolation," and it remained so until the 
war broke out. He says nothing of the rapid ad- 
vances which w T ere proceeding from stage to stage 
in the organization of German battle-fleets to be 
added to her formidable army, or of the risk these 
advances made for England if she were to find her- 
self without any friends outside. 

As regards Russia, Isvolsky, who had never 
forgiven the Austrian Foreign Minister, Count 
d'Aerenthal, for his diplomatic victory in getting 
the annexation to Austria of Bosnia and Herze- 
govina in 1908, was very hostile to Austria, and 
consequently to her Ally. In the case of France, 
again, it was indeed true that M. Jules Cambon 
had repeatedly emphasized to the ex-Chancellor the 
desire for more intimate relations between France 
and Germany. But the French had never forgiven 
the driving of Delcasse out of office, and the 

"3 



Before the War 

result of the Algeciras conference had not healed 
the wound. Besides this, there was the undying 
question of Alsace-Lorraine. 

The outcome of the precarious situation, says 
the ex-Chancellor, was that England, following 
her traditional policy of balancing the Powers of 
Europe, was taking a firm position on the side of 
France and Russia, while Germany was increasing 
her naval power and giving a very definite direc- 
tion to her policy in the East. The commercial 
rivalry between England and Germany was being 
rendered acute politically by the growth of the 
German fleet. In this state of things Bethmann 
Hollweg formed the opinion that there was only 
one thing that could be done, to aim at withdraw- 
ing from the Dual Alliance the backing of Eng- 
land for its anti-German policy. The Emperor 
entirely agreed with him, and it was resolved to 
attempt to attain this purpose by coming to an 
understanding with England. 

Reading between the lines, it is pretty obvious 
that the ex-Chancellor was at times embarrassed 
by the public utterances of his imperial Master. 
Him he defends throughout the book with con- 
spicuous loyalty, and is emphatic about his desire 
to keep the peace, a desire founded in religious 
conviction. But the Emperor's way was to see 

1 14 



The German Attitude 

only one thing at the moment. I translate* a 
passage from his Chancellor's book: 

"If from time to time he indulged in passionate 
expressions about the strong position in the world 
of Germany, his desire was that the nation, whose 
development beyond all expectation was filling him 
with conscious pride, should be spurred on to a fresh 
heightening of its energies. He sought to give it 
a continuous impulse with the energy of his en- 
thusiastic nature. He wished his people to be 
strong and powerful in capacity to arm for their 
defense, but the German mission, which was for 
him a consuming faith, was yet to be a mission of 
work and of peace. That this work and this peace 
should not be destroyed by the dangers that sur- 
rounded us, was his increasing anxiety. Again and 
again has the Kaiser told me that his journey to 
Tangier in 1904, as to which he was quite unaware 
that it would lead to dangerous complications, was 
undertaken much against his own will, and only 
under pressure from his political advisers. More- 
over, his personal influence was strongly exerted 
for a settlement of the Morocco crisis of 1905. And 
the same sense of the need of peace gave rise to his 
attitude during the Boer War and also during the 

* In both cases I am writing with the books before me in the 
original. 

115 



Before the War 

Russo-Japanese War. To a ruler who really 
wanted war, opportunities for military intervention 
in the affairs of the world were truly not lacking. 
"Critics in Germany had in that period fre- 
quently pressed the point that a too frequent insist- 
ence in public on our readiness for peace was less 
likely to further it than, on the contrary, to 
strengthen the Entente in its policy of altering the 
status quo. In a period of Imperialism in which 
the talk about material power was loud, and in 
which the preservation of the peace of the world 
was considered only accidentally, like the ten years 
before the war, considerations such as these are 
undoubtedly full of significance, and perhaps the 
same sort of thing explains a good deal of strong 
language on the part of the Kaiser about Ger- 
many's capacity in case of war. It is certain that 
such utterances did not lessen the feeling of nerv- 
ousness that filled the international atmosphere. 
But the true ground of such nervousness was the 
policy of the balance of power, which had split 
Europe into two armed camps full of distrust of 
each other. The Ambassadors of the Great Powers 
knew the Kaiser intimately enough to realize what 
his intentions, in spite of everything, were, and it 
required an untruthfulness only explicable by the 
psychological effect of war to permit the suggestion 

116 



The German Attitude 

of a hateful and distorted picture of him as a tyrant 
seeking for the domination of the world and for 
war and bloodshed." 

I have translated this passage from the book 
because I think it is instructive in its disclosure of 
uneasy self-consciousness on the part of the author. 
Obviously, the Emperor made his quiet-loving 
Minister at times uncomfortable. I do not doubt 
that the Emperor really desired peace, just as Herr 
von Bethmann Hollweg tells us. Yet he not only 
indulged himself in warlike talk, but was sur- 
rounded by a group of military and naval advisers 
who were preaching openly that war was inevitable, 
and were instructing many of the prominent intel- 
lectual leaders in their doctrine. The Emperor 
may well have been in a difficult situation. But 
he was playing with fire when he made such 
speeches to the world as he frequently did. I 
believe him to have most genuinely desired to keep 
the peace. But I doubt whether he was willing to 
pay the price for entry on the only path along 
which it could have been made secure. He was 
a man of many sides, with a genius for speaking 
winged words as part of his equipment. He was a 
dangerous leader for Germany under conditions 
which had already caused even a Bismarck concern. 

117 



Before the War 

The result was that the world took him to be the 
ally, not of Bethmann Hollweg, but of Tirpitz, 
and what that meant we shall see when we come to 
the latter's book. I can not say that I think the 
judgment of the world was other than, to put the 
matter at its lowest, the natural and probable result 
of his language, and I find nothing in the ex- 
Chancellor's volume to lead me to a different 
conclusion. 

The argument of that volume is that England 
should never have entered the Entente, for that by 
doing so she strengthened France and Russia so as 
to enable them to indulge the will for war. He 
assumes that there was this will as beyond doubt. 
But suppose England had not entered the Entente, 
what then? On Herr von Bethmann Hollweg's 
own showing France and Russia would have 
remained too weak to entertain the hope of success 
in a conflict with the Triple Alliance. Germany 
could, under these circumstances, have herself 
compelled these Powers to an entente or even an 
alliance. England would have been in such a case 
left in isolation in days in which isolation had ceased 
to be "splendid." For great as was her navy, it 
could not have been relied upon as sufficient to 
protect her adequately against the combined navies 
of Germany, France, Russia, and Austria, with 

118 



The German Attitude 

that of Italy possibly added. It was the apprehen- 
sion occasioned by Germany's warlike policy that 
made it an unavoidable act of prudence to enter 
into the Entente. It was our only means of making 
our sea power secure and able to protect us against 
threats of invasions by great Continental armies. 
The Emperor and his Chancellor should therefore 
have thought of some other way of securing the 
peace than that of trying to detach us from the 
Entente. 

The alternative was obvious. Germany should 
have offered to cease to pile up armaments, if our 
desire for friendly relations all round could be so 
extended as to bring all the Powers belonging to 
both groups into them, along with England. But 
the German policy of relying on superior strength 
in armaments as the true guarantee of peace 
did not admit of this. I am no admirer of the 
principle of the balance of power. I should like 
to say good-bye to it. I prefer the principle 
of a League of Nations, if that be practicable, or, 
at the very least, of an Entente comprising all the 
Powers. But if neither of these alternatives be 
possible there remains, for the people who desire 
to be secure, only the method of the balance of 
power. Now Germany drove us to this by her 
indisposition to change her traditional policy and 

119 



Before the War 

to be content to rely on the settlement of specific 
differences for the good feeling that always tends 
to result. She had, it is true, the misfortune for 
so strong a nation to have been born a hundred 
years too late. She had got less in Africa than she 
might have had. We were ready to help her to a 
place in the sun there and elsewhere in the world, 
and to give up something for this end, if only we 
could secure peace and contentment on her part. 
But she would not have it so, and she chose to 
follow the principle of relying on the "Mailed 
Fist." Of this policy, when pursued recklessly, 
Bismarck well understood the danger. "Prestige 
politics," as he called them, he hated. In Feb- 
ruary, 1888, he laid down in a well-known speech 
what he held to be the true principle. "Every 
Great Power which seeks to exert pressure on the 
politics of other countries, and to direct affairs out- 
side the sphere of interest which God has assigned 
to it, carries on politics of power, and not of in- 
terest; it works for prestige." But that principle 
was not consistently followed by William the 
Second. Into the detailed story of his departure 
from it I have not space to enter. But those who 
wish to follow this will do well to read the narrative 
contained in an admirable and open-minded book 
by Mr. Harbutt Dawson, "The German Empire 

120 



The German Attitude 

from 1867 to 1914," in the second volume of which 
the story is told in detail. 

Instead of trying to alter the traditional atti- 
tude of Germany to her neighbors, Herr von 
Bethmann Hollweg let it continue. That he did 
not want it to continue I am pretty sure. At page 
130 of his book he appeals to me, personally, to 
recall the words he used in a conversation we had 
one evening in February, 1912, words in which 
he sought to show me that "a proper understand- 
ing between our two nations would guarantee the 
peace of the world, and would lead the Powers by 
degrees from the phantom of armed Imperialism 
to the opposite pole of peaceful work together in 
the world." I remember his words, and with them 
I would remind him that I wholly agreed. I had 
myself used similar language in anticipation, and 
had begged him not to insist on our accepting an 
obligation of absolute neutrality under all condi- 
tions which might prove inconsistent with our duty 
of loyalty to France, now a friendly neighbor, a 
duty which rested on no military obligation, but on 
kindly feeling and regard. It was such friendship 
and mutual regard that I was striving, with the 
assent of the British Cabinet, to bring about with 
Germany also, and by the same means through 
which it had been accomplished in the case of 

121 



Before the War 

France. Not by any secret military convention, 
for we had entered into no communications which 
bound us to do more than study conceivable possi- 
bilities in a fashion which the German General 
Staff would look on as mere matter of routine for 
a country the shores of which lay so near to those 
of France, but by removing all material causes of 
friction. And when Herr von Bethmann Hollweg 
adds of my reply that "even he preferred the 
power of English Dreadnoughts and the friend- 
ship of France," I must remind him of the words 
sanctioned beforehand when submitted by me to 
Sir Edward Grey, with which I began our con- 
versation. I reproduce them from the record I 
made immediately after the conversation to which 
I have already referred in the preceding chapter, 
on which I again draw for further minor details. 
And I wish to say, in passing, that both Herr von 
Bethmann Hollweg and Admiral von Tirpitz have 
given in their books accounts of what passed in my 
conversations with them which tally substantially, 
so far as the words used are concerned, with my 
own notes and recollections. It is mainly as to the 
inferences they now draw from my then attitude 
that I have any controversy with them, and, in the 
case of Admiral von Tirpitz, to some slight in- 
accuracies which have arisen from misconstruction. 

122 



The German Attitude 

The ex-Imperial Chancellor asked the question 
whether I was to talk to him officially, the diffi- 
culty being that he could not divest himself of his 
official position, and that it would be awkward to 
speak with me in a purely private capacity. I said 
I had come officially, so far as the approval of the 
King and the Cabinet was concerned, but merely 
to talk over the ground, and not to commit either 
himself or my own Government at this stage to 
definite propositions. At the first interview, which 
took place in the British Embassy, on Thursday, 
February 8, 1912, and lasted for more than an 
hour and a half, I began by giving him a message 
of good wishes for the Conversations and for the 
future of Anglo-German relations, with which the 
King had entrusted me at the audience I had before 
leaving London. I proceeded to ask whether he 
wished to make the first observations himself, or 
desired that I should begin. He wished me to 
begin, and I went on at once to speak to him in 
the sense arranged in the discussions I had with 
Sir Edward Grey before leaving London. 

I told him that I felt there had been a great 
deal of drifting away between Germany and 
England, and that it was important to ask what 
was the cause. To ascertain this, events of recent 
history had to be taken into account. Germany 

123 



Before the War 

had built up, and was building up, magnificent 
armaments, and, with the aid of the Triple Alli- 
ance, she had become the center of a tremendous 
group. The natural consequence was that other 
Powers had tended to approximate. I was not 
questioning for a moment Germany's right to her 
policy, but this was the natural and inevitable con- 
sequence in the interests of security. We used to 
have much the same situation with France, when 
she was very powerful on the seas, that we had with 
Germany now. While the fact to which I had 
referred created a difficulty, the difficulty was not 
insuperable ; for two groups of Powers might be on 
very friendly relations if there was only an increas- 
ing sense of mutual understanding and confidence. 
The present seemed to me to be a favorable 
moment for a new departure. The Morocco ques- 
tion was now out of the way, and we had no agree- 
ments with France or Russia except those that 
were in writing and published to the world. 

The Chancellor here interrupted me, and asked 
me whether this was really so. I said it was so, 
and that, in the situation which now existed, I saw 
no reason why it should not be possible for us to 
enter into a new and cordial friendship carrying 
the two old ones into it, perhaps to the profit of 
Russia and France, as well as of Germany herself. 

124 



The German Attitude 

He replied that he had no reason to differ from 
this view. 

He and I both referred to the war scare of the 
autumn of 1911, and he observed that we had 
made military preparations. I was aware that the 
German Military Attache in London had reported 
at that time to Berlin that we had so reorganized 
our army as to be in a position, if we desired to do 
so, to send six of our new infantry divisions and 
at least one cavalry division swiftly to France. 
The Chancellor obviously had this in his mind, and 
I told him that the preparations made were only 
those required to bring the capacity of our small 
British Army, in point of mobilization for eventu- 
alities which must be clear to him, to something 
approaching the standard of that celerity in its 
operations which Moltke had long ago accomplished 
for Germany and which was with her now a matter 
of routine. For this purpose we had studied 
our deficiencies and modes of operation. This, 
however, concerned our own direct interests, and 
was a purely departmental matter concerning the 
War Office, and the Minister who had the most to 
do with it was the one who was now talking to him 
and who was not wanting in friendly feeling to- 
ward Germany. We could not run the risk of 
being caught unprepared. 

125 



Before the War 

As both Herr von Bethmann Hollweg and 
Admiral von Tirpitz have devoted a good deal of 
attention to these and other conversations in their 
books, I have felt at liberty here and in the last 
chapter to state what, I am bound to observe, 
had better not, as it seems to me personally, have 
been held back for so long — the exact nature of 
that which actually passed when I was sent to 
Berlin in February, 1912. Accordingly, it is only 
necessary that I should add here a few words more 
about what indeed appears in most of its detail 
from the versions given by the two German 
Ministers concerned themselves. 

I refused, not only because I had been in- 
structed to do so, but because in my own opinion 
it was vital that I should refuse, to negotiate 
excepting on the basis of absolute loyalty to the 
Entente with France and Russia. The German 
Government asked for a covenant of absolute 
neutrality. This I could not look at. I had the 
same feeling about such an agreement for uncon- 
ditional neutrality as Caprivi had when he was 
asked to renew the Reinsurance Treaty which 
Bismarck made with Russia at Skiernevice in 1884, 
and under which, notwithstanding that Germany 
might come to owe a duty to Austria to support 
her as her military Ally, he bound Germany to 

126 



The German Attitude 

observe neutrality in case Russia were attacked by 
her. So far as appeared this Reinsurance Treaty 
probably had suggested the wording of the analo- 
gous formula which the Chancellor was proposing 
to myself. But altho we were not under the 
obligation to France which Germany was under to 
Austria in 1884, I felt, to use the words of Caprivi 
himself, when he succeeded Bismarck, and was 
asked to renew the engagement with Russia, that 
the arrangement was "too complicated" for my 
comprehension. It would have been not only 
wrong to expose a friendly France to the risk of 
being dismembered by an unjustifiable invasion, 
while her friend England merely stood looking on, 
but it would also have been prejudicial to our 
safety. For to have allowed Germany to take 
possession of the northern ports of France would 
have been to imperil our island security. The 
Chancellor was entitled to make the request he did, 
but I was bound to refuse it. I also, at the same 
time, told him that if Germany went on increasing 
her Navy, any agreement with us meant to lead to 
better relations would be little more than "bones 
without flesh." Germany might, indeed, as he had 
said, need a third training squadron, in addition 
to the two she had already in the North Sea. This 
we could easily meet by moving more of our ships 

127 



Before the War 

to northern waters, without having to increase the 
number we were building independently. But if 
she had the idea of adding to her fleet on a con- 
siderable scale we should be bound to lay down two 
keels to every one of her new ships, and the inevit- 
able result would be, no proportionate increase in 
her strength relatively to ours, but of a certainty 
a good deal of bad feeling. 

I may observe that at the date of this conversa- 
tion the new German Fleet Bill had not been made 
public, and we knew nothing of its contents in 
London, excepting that a third squadron for train- 
ing was to be added to the two which were already 
there. For this purpose it had been said that a 
few ships and a moderate increase in personnel 
would be all that was required. Before I left 
Berlin the Emperor, as I mentioned in the 
preceding chapter, handed to me, with friendly 
frankness and with permission to show it to 
my colleagues, an advance copy of the new Bill. 
It looked to me as if, when scrutinized, its pro- 
posals might prove more formidable than we had 
anticipated. But I asked his permission to abstain 
from trying to form any judgment on this question 
without the aid of the British Admiralty, and I 
put it in my pocket and handed it to the First Lord 
of the Admiralty at a Cabinet held on Monday, 

128 



The German Attitude 

February 12, in the afternoon of the day on which 
I returned to London. I was not very sure as to 
what might prove to be contained in this Bill, and 
my misgivings were confirmed by our Admiralty 
experts, who found in it a program of de- 
stroyers, submarines, and personnel far in excess 
of anything indicated in the only rumors that had 
reached us. After we had to abandon the idea of 
getting Germany to accept the carefully guarded 
formula of neutrality which was all that we could 
entertain, the Cabinet sanctioned without delay 
the additions to our navy which were required to 
counter these increases. Our policy was to avoid 
conflagration by every effort possible, and at the 
same time to insure the house in case of failure. 

I felt throughout these conversations that the 
Chancellor was sincerely desirous of meeting me 
in the effort to establish good relations between 
the two countries. But he was hampered by the 
difficulty of changing the existing policy of build- 
ing up armaments which was imposed on him. In 
only one way could he manage this, and that was 
by getting me to agree to a formula of absolute 
neutrality under all circumstances. The other, the 
better, and the only way that was admissible for 
us, the way in which we had surmounted all diffi- 
culties with France and Russia, he was not free to 

129 



Before the War 

enter on, tho I believe that he really wished to. 
Hence the attempt at a complete agreement failed. 
But, as he says himself, much good came of these 
initial conversations, and still more of the subse- 
quent conversations which followed on them in 
London between Sir Edward Grey and the Ger- 
man Ambassador. Candor became the order of 
the day, minor difficulties were smoothed over, and 
a treaty for territorial rearrangements, of the gen- 
eral character discussed in Berlin, was finally agreed 
on, and was likely to have been signed had the war 
not intervened. 

As to the rest of the narrative in the ex- 
Chancellor's book, this is not the place to deal with 
it. His view that Germany was doing her best to 
moderate the rash action in Vienna which resulted 
in the declaration of war on Serbia, while England 
was doing much less to restrain the course of events 
at St. Petersburg, is not one which it is easy to 
bring into harmony with the documents published. 
This is a part of the history of events before the 
war which has already been exhaustively dealt with 
by others, and it is no part of the purpose of these 
pages to write of matters about which I have no 
first-hand knowledge. For I had little opportunity 
of taking any direct part in our affairs with Ger- 
many after my final visit to that country, which 

130 



The German Attitude 

was in 1912. My duties as Lord Chancellor were 
too engrossing. 

There are, however, in this connection just 
two topics toward the end of the book which are 
of such interest that I will refer to them before 
passing away from it. The first is the story that 
there was a Crown Council at Potsdam on July 5, 
1914, at which the Emperor determined on war. 
This Herr von Bethmann Hollweg denies. He 
explains that in the morning of that day the 
Austrian Ambassador lunched with the Emperor, 
presumably at Potsdam, and took the opportunity 
of handing to him a letter written by the Emperor 
of Austria personally, together with a memoran- 
dum on policy drawn up in Vienna. This 
memorandum contained a detailed plan for oppos- 
ing Russian enterprise in the Balkan peninsula by 
energetic diplomatic pressure. Against a hostile 
Serbia and an unreliable Roumania resort was to 
be had to Bulgaria and Turkey, with a view to the 
establishment of a Balkan League, excluding 
Serbia, to be formed under the a?gis of the Central 
Powers. The Serajevo murder was declared to 
have demonstrated the aggressive and irreconcilable 
character of Serbian policy. The Austrian 
Emperor's letter endorsed the views contained in 
the memorandum, and added that, if the agitation 

131 



Before the War 

in Belgrade continued, the pacific views of the 
Powers were in danger. The German Emperor 
said that he must consult his Chancellor before 
answering, and sent for Bethmann Hollweg and 
the Under-Secretary, Zimmermann. He saw 
them in the afternoon in the park of the Neues 
Palais at Potsdam. The Chancellor thinks that 
no one else was present. It was agreed that the 
situation was very serious. The ex-Chancellor says 
that he had already learned the tenor of these 
Austrian documents, altho he did not see the 
text of the subsequent ultimatum to Serbia until 
July 22. It was determined that it was no part of 
the duty of Germany to give advice to her Ally as 
to how she should deal with the Serajevo murder. 
But every effort was to be made to prevent the 
controversy between Austria and Serbia from 
developing into an international conflict. It was 
useful to try to bring in Bulgaria, but Roumania 
had better be left out of account. These conclu- 
sions were in accordance with the Chancellor's 
own opinion, and when he returned to Berlin he 
communicated them to the Austrian Ambassador. 
Germany would do what she could to make 
Roumania friendly, and Austria was told that in 
any case she might rely on her Ally, Germany, to 
stand firmly by her side. 

132 



The German Attitude 

The next day the Emperor set off in his yacht 
for the northern seas. The Chancellor says he 
advised him to do this because the expedition was 
one which the Emperor had been in the habit of 
making every year at that season, and it would 
cause talk if this usual journey were to be 
abandoned. 

The other point relates to the date on which the 
German Chancellor saw the text of the Austrian 
ultimatum to Serbia. He tells us that it was 
brought to him for the first time on the evening of 
July 22 by Herr von Jagow, the Foreign Secre- 
tary, who had just received it from the Austrian 
Ambassador. The Chancellor saj^s that von Jagow 
thought the ultimatum too strongly worded, and 
wished for some delay. But when he told the 
Ambassador this the answer was that the document 
had already been dispatched, and it was published 
in the Vienna Telegraph the next morning. 

The conclusion of the Chancellor is that the 
stories of the Crown Council at Potsdam on July 5, 
and of the co-operation of the German Govern- 
ment in preparing the ultimatum, are mere legends. 
The question of substance as regards the first may 
be left for interpretation by posterity. As to the 
controversy about the second, it would be interest- 
ing to know whether Herr von Tschirsky, the 

133 



Before the War 

German Ambassador at Vienna, knew of the 
ultimatum before it assumed the form in which it 
reached Berlin on July 22. I shall have more to 
say about these incidents later on when I come to 
Admiral von Tirpitz's account of them. 

My criticism of Herr von Bethmann Hollweg 
is in no case founded on any doubt at all as to his 
veracity. I formed, in the course of my dealings 
with him, a high opinion of his integrity. But in 
his reasoning he is apt to let circumstances escape 
his notice which are in a large degree material for 
forming a judgment. This does not seem to me 
to arise from any deliberate intention to be other- 
wise than candid. I am sure that he believes that 
he is telling the full truth at all times. But he 
became a convinced partizan, quite intelligibly. 
This fact, however creditable to his patriotism, 
seems to me not only to explain why he thought it 
right to continue in office and stand by his country 
as long as he could through the war, but also to 
detract somewhat from the weight that would 
otherwise attach to the opinions of an honorable 
and well-meaning man. 

I pass to the examination of the concurrent 
policy against which he could not prevail, and the 
existence of which takes the edge off his reason- 
ing. That policy is expounded fully and clearly 

134 



The German Attitude 

by Admiral von Tirpitz, a German of the tradi- 
tional Military School, a man of great ability, and 
one who rarely if ever allowed himself to be de- 
flected from pursuing a concentrated purpose to 
the utmost of his power. 

Of the general character of this purpose his 
colleague, Bethmann Hollweg, was conscious, as 
appears from passages in the book just discussed, 
of which I have selected one for translation. 

"The fleet was the favorite child of Germany, 
for in it the onward-pressing energies of the 
nation seemed to be most vividly illustrated. The 
application of the most modern technical skill, and 
the organization that had been worked out with so 
much care, were admired, and rightly so. To the 
doubts of those versed in affairs whether we were 
pursuing our true path by building great battle- 
ships, there was opposed a fanatical public opinion 
which was not disciplined in the interest of those 
responsible for the direction of affairs. Reflections 
about the difficult international troubles to which 
our naval policy was giving rise were held in check 
by a robust agitation. In the navy itself the con- 
sciousness was by no means everywhere present 
that the navy must be only an instrument of policy 
and not its determining factor. The conduct of 
naval policy had for many years rested in the hands 

135 



Before the War 

of a man who claimed to exercise political authority 
over his department, and who influenced un- 
brokenly the political opinion of wider circles. 
Where differences arose between the Admiralty 
and the civilian leadership, public opinion was 
almost without exception on the side of the Ad- 
miralty. Any attempt to take into consideration 
relative proportions in the strength of other nations 
was treated as being the outcome of a weak-minded 
apprehension of the foreigner." 

When I was in Berlin in 1912, the last year in 
which, as I have already said, I visited Germany, 
there were those who thought that Bethmann 
Hollweg would shortly be superseded as Chancellor 
by his powerful rival, Admiral von Tirpitz. But in 
these days the peace party in that country was 
pretty strong, and the then Chancellor was re- 
garded as a cautious and safe man. It was later 
on, in 1913, when the new Military Law, with 
£50,000,000 of fresh expenditure, was passed, that 
the situation became much more doubtful. But the 
hesitation that existed in Government circles in 
Berlin earlier was never shared by the author of 
the "Erinnerwngen" to which I now pass. One 
has only to look at the portrait at the beginning of 
that volume to see what sort of a man the author 
is. A strong man certainly, a descendant of the 

136 




ADMIRAL ALFRED P. VON TIRPITZ 

LORD HIGH ADMIRAL OF THE GERMAN IMPERIAL NAVY FROM 1911 TO 1916. 



The German Attitude 

class which clustered round the great Moltke, and 
gave much anxiety at times to Bismarck himself. 
The Admiral possesses a "General Staff" 
mind of a high order. A mind of this type has 
never been given a chance of systematic develop- 
ment in the English Navy, where the distinction 
between strategy and tactics, on the one hand, and 
administration on the other, has never been so 
sharply laid down as it has been, following the 
great Moltke, in Germany. Even Moltke himself 
was not satisfied with what had been accomplished 
in Germany in this direction by the Army. He is 
said to have complained that the General Staff 
building, which was put in the Thiergarten, while 
the War Office was in Berlin itself, near the corner 
of the Wilhelmstrasse, was only one mile distant 
from the War Office, when it should have been 
two. For he held that the exactness of demarca- 
tion of function, which was only to be attained if 
strategy and tactics were studied continuously 
by a specially chosen body of experts, could not 
be made complete if the War Office could get too 
easily at the .General Staff. But what he accom- 
plished at least gave rise to a school of exact 
military thought far in advance of any that had 
preceded it. The fruits of this were reaped in the 
war with Austria in 1866, and still more in that 

137 



Before the War 

with France in 1870. And when the navy was 
first organized this principle was introduced into 
its organization, first by Stosch and then by 
Caprivi. Both of these had been trained in the 
great Moltke's ideas, and it was because of this 
that, altho soldiers, they were chosen to model 
the organization of the German Navy. It is true 
that we have beaten the German Navy. That was 
because, as Tirpitz himself admits, we possessed, 
not only superior numbers, but a tradition of long 
standing and a spirit in our fleet which Germany 
had not built up. But we shall do well not to 
overlook what he has to say about the procedure of 
basing strategy and tactics on exact knowledge, and 
careful study, especially when such ideas as that 
of landing small expeditionary forces on enemy 
territory by means of a naval expedition, are being 
considered, nor what he says of his efforts to make 
this procedure real. Numbers are not always suf- 
ficient. They are not likely to be large for a long 
time to come, and the study of all possibilities and 
of modern conditions is therefore more important 
than ever. The British Army knows this. It is 
not so clear that the British Navy is equally in- 
formed about the necessity of bearing the principle 
in mind. 

Tirpitz never served in the army, but he was 
138 



The German Attitude 

brought up under the influence of these great 
soldiers. His first experience was indeed mainly 
in technical matters of construction. But he never 
let go the true principle of an Admiral or War 
Staff, and the result was that he considered, and 
not wholly without reason, that he was leading the 
German Navy on lines which were in the end 
likely to make it, when fully developed, a more 
powerful instrument than the British Navy. In- 
stead of studying merely the lessons of the past, 
as we here seek them in, for instance, the history 
of the Seven Years' War of more than a century 
and a half ago, or in the operations of Nelson 
carried out a hundred years since, he insisted that 
the German Navy should study systematically 
modern problems, and in particular combined naval 
and military operations. In England we had no 
War Staff for the Navy until 1911, and our Senior 
Admirals disliked the idea. Consequently such 
staff study of military problems has never been 
properly developed, the wishes of our junior naval 
officers notwithstanding. In Germany the idea 
was regarded as a vital one throughout by Tirpitz. 
The first chapter of Tirpitz's book describes 
the beginnings of the German Navy. The second 
deals with the Stosch period. The third is devoted 
to the administration of Capri vi during the time 

139 



Before the War 

when he was head of the Admiralty, and extends 
to the period when he became Chancellor. The 
fourth is devoted to construction. The fifth 
describes the disastrous breaking up of the Naval 
Administration into Boards, to which the author 
says the Emperor William II. allowed himself to 
be persuaded. The sixth chapter is directed to 
tactical developments, a subject in which Admiral 
Tirpitz himself did much. The seventh deals with 
naval plans. The eighth contains a very interest- 
ing description of how he was sent to find a naval 
base in Chinese waters, and how he selected and 
developed, with German thoroughness, Tsingtau 
(Kiaochow). The ninth chapter begins the story 
of the difficulties he experienced when refused 
sufficient money and freedom while he was 
Minister of Marine. The tenth gives a vividly 
written account of his visits to Bismarck. The 
next five chapters are devoted to the development 
of the German Navy and its relation to foreign 
policy. The sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth 
chapters are concerned with the author's views of 
the reasons for the outbreak of the war of 1914, 
and its history. The nineteenth is a chapter 
devoted to the submarine war, and to a farewell 
apostrophe to a Germany lost by bad leading and 
vagueness in objectives. There is also a supple- 

140 



The German Attitude 

ment, containing letters written by him from time 
to time during the war, and his observations on 
what ought to have been the consistent policy of 
Germany in construction of battleships and sub- 
marines. 

The great thesis of the book is that the only 
way to preserve the peace was to make Europe fear 
German strength, and that this imported such 
battle-fleets as would attract allies to Germany for 
protection, and would thus in the end weaken 
the Entente. England was the real enemy, and 
England could not be dislodged from her power- 
ful position in the world so long as she was 
allowed to continue in command of the ocean. For 
Bethmann Hollweg's alternative policy of a peace- 
ful rapprochement with England he has no words 
but those of contempt. He, too, he says, had ideas 
as to how to keep the peace, but they were dia- 
metrically different from those of his colleague 
the Chancellor. On him he pours scorn for his 
attempts at departure from the policy of Frederick 
the Great and Bismarck. 

Tirpitz had been deeply impressed by the 
writings of Admiral Mahan. He himself drew 
from them the lesson that in ultimate analysis 
world-power for Germany depended on the sea- 
power which she had not got, and he set himself 

141 



Before the War 

to build it up. He endeavored to educate on 
this subject, not only the Reichstag, where he says 
he had much opposition, but the public. Under 
Prince Biilow this was less difficult than he sub- 
sequently found it. His account of how the 
Minister of Education and the University pro- 
fessors helped him, and of how he contrived to 
enlist the Press, is as interesting as it is significant. 
But his great difficulty was obviously with William 
the Second. The Emperor had done much for 
fleet construction, and was so interested in it 
that he meddled at every turn in technical and 
strategical matters alike. The Ministry of Marine 
was not allowed to carry out the Admiral's own 
plans and conceptions. And when Bethmann 
came on the scene the situation became, accord- 
ing to the former, even worse. He moans over 
the apparent limitlessness of the money and 
authority with which the English Admiralty was 
provided by Parliament and the nation. At last 
he carried with his colleagues and in the Reichstag 
the policy of Fleet Laws, under which the Reichs- 
tag passed measures which took construction, in 
part at least, from off the annual navy vote, and 
he got through the succession of Acts that laid 
down programs extending over several years. 
Richter and other distinguished public men fought 

142 






The German Attitude 

Tirpitz over these, but, in part at least, he got his 
way, and secured the nearest approach to continuity 
that his ever-supervising Sovereign would permit 
to him. 

What Tirpitz says he asked for above every- 
thing was a definite policy for war, and thfs he 
could not get the leave of Bethmann to lay down, 
nor could he get the volatile Emperor to stick to 
definite conceptions of it. For coast defense he 
had a supreme contempt. The great German 
Army would take care of this, so far as invasion 
was concerned, and an adequate battle-fleet would 
do the rest. It is noticeable that apparently he 
never even dreamed of trying to invade England 
with her fleet protection. It was in quite another 
way that he intended, if necessary, to harass this 
country. He wanted to threaten our commerce 
and to be able to break any blockade of Germany. 
German sea-power was to be made strong enough 
to attract allies by its ability to rally all free nations 
without any curator ship by the Anglo-Saxons. 

This is what he says his war objectives were. 
He bitterly complains of the opposition to them 
and to himself which he met with from such papers 
as the Frankfurter Zeitung, and from the influence 
of certain of his colleagues. Constitutionalism he 
appears to have hated. The democracy of Ger- 

143 






Before the War 

many was not suited to such leading as Lloyd 
George, during the war, gave to England, and 
Clemenceau to France. In Germany, he declares, 
a strong hand is always required, and a revolution 
is inevitable in case the hand is weak, and defeat 
follows. For Germany needed "the Prussian- 
German State." The tradition of Frederick the 
Great and Bismarck was its protecting spirit. 

Can we wonder, if the narrative of this capable 
man is accurate, that Bethmann struggled for his 
rival policy of conciliation in the face of almost 
insuperable difficulties? Tirpitz had a strong 
party at his back, both in Prussia and elsewhere. 
What made it strong was largely that its members 
shared his view of England and of the situation. 
"They looked to us," he says, "it was the last 
chance of international freedom." I thought in 
1912 that Bethmann might in the end win, for in 
the main at that time the Emperor was with him, 
and so were Ballin and many others of great 
influence. The Social Democrats, too, were gain- 
ing influence rapidly. But the presence of a 
powerful school of thought at the back of Tirpitz, 
a school which, had it succeeded, would have 
secured the place it desired by reducing to a pre- 
carious state the life of my own country, made me 
feel that, while we must do all we could to extend 

144 



The German Attitude 

our friendships so as to convert and bring in Ger- 
many, the chances of success did not preponderate 
sufficiently to justify relaxation of either vigilance 
in preparation or resolution in policy. My feeling 
remained what I had tried to express in the address 
delivered at Oxford in August of 1911. "I wish," 
I said then, "all our politicians who concern them- 
selves with Anglo- German relations, those who are 
pro-German as well as those who are not, could go 
to Berlin and learn something, not only of the 
language and intellectual history of Prussia, but 
of the standpoint of her people — and of the disad- 
vantages as well as the advantages of an excessive 
lucidity of conception. Nowhere else in Germany 
that I know of is this to be studied so advan- 
tageously and so easily as in Berlin, the seat of 
Government, the headquarters of Real-politik, and 
it seems to me most apparent among the highly 
educated classes there." 

Bismarck does not appear to have known much 
while in office about Tirpitz, and when the latter 
desired later on to enlist his outside support he 
did not find it at first easy. But, having with some 
difficulty got the assent of the Emperor to a new 
ship being named after Bismarck, he in the end 
got from the latter permission to visit him at 
Friedrichsruh in 1897. There Tirpitz arrived at 

145 



Before the War 

noon. The family were at luncheon. He tells us 
how the Prince sat at the head of the table, and 
how he rose, cool but polite, and remained stand- 
ing till Tirpitz was seated. The Prince assumed the 
air of one suffering from sharp neuralgic pain, and 
he kept pressing the side of his head with a small 
indiarubber hot-water bottle. It was only with 
an appearance of difficulty that he uttered, and 
his food was minced meat. However, when he had 
drunk a bottle and a half of German champagne 
(Sect) he became animated. After the dishes were 
removed, Countess Wilhelm Bismarck lit his great 
pipe for him, and with the other ladies quitted the 
room. The atmosphere was one of gloomy silence. 
But the great man suddenly broke it by raising his 
formidable eyebrows, and directing a grim look 
at Tirpitz, whom he appears next to have asked 
whether he himself was a tomcat that needed only to 
be stroked in order to procure sparks to be emitted. 
Tirpitz then timidly unfolded his plans and his 
policy of building big battleships. Bismarck was 
critical, and turned his criticism to other matters 
also. He denounced as disastrous the abrogation 
by Caprivi and William the Second of the treaty 
he (Bismarck) had made with Russia for Reinsur- 
ance. Bismarck declared that, in case of an 
Anglo-Russian war, our policy was contained in 

146 



The German Attitude 

the simple words: neutrality as regards Russia. 
The modest Tirpitz ventured to suggest that only 
a fleet strong enough to be respected could make 
Germany worthy of an alliance in the eyes of 
Russia and other powers. Bismarck rejected this 
almost angrily. The English he thought little of. 
If they tried to invade Germany the Landwehr 
would knock them down with the butt-ends of 
their rifles. That a close blockade might knock 
Germany down never seemed to occur to him. 
However, in the end Tirpitz says that the Prince 
became mollified and expressed agreement with the 
view that an increased fleet was necessary. 

Bismarck then invited the Admiral to go with 
him for a drive in the forest. Despite the 
neuralgia, this drive, which took place amid 
showers of rain, lasted for two hours. The 
carriage, moreover, was open. There were two 
bottles of beer, one on the right and the other 
on the left of the Prince, which they drank on 
the way, and he smoked his pipe continuously. 
"It was not easy to keep pace with his giant 
constitution." 

For the details of the conversation, which was 
conducted in English so that the coachman might 
not understand it, I must refer the reader to the 
chapter in which it is described. The old warrior 

147 



Before the War 

spoke with affection of the Emperor Frederick, 
but as regarded his son William, he appears to 
have let himself go. Tirpitz was to tell the latter 
that he, Bismarck, only wanted to be let alone, 
and die in peace. His task was ended. He had 
"no future and no hopes." 

Tirpitz saw Bismarck twice subsequently. The 
last time was on the occasion of a surprize visit 
to him by the Emperor. This visit was not wholly 
a success. The conversation got on to unfortunate 
lines. Bismarck began to speak of politics, and 
the Emperor ignored what he said and did not 
reply. The younger Moltke, who was present, 
whispered to Tirpitz, "It is terrible," alluding to 
the Emperor's want of reverence. When the 
Emperor left, his Minister, von Lucanus, who was 
with him, held out his hand to the old Prince. 
But Lucanus had formerly intrigued against him. 
Consequently he "sat like a statue, not a muscle 
moved. He gazed into the air, and before him 
Lucanus made gestures in vain." 

All this notwithstanding, Tirpitz seems to have 
made a good impression. For after these visits the 
Bismarck press began to speak favorably of him. 

But I must not linger over side issues. The 
book is so full of interesting material that in writing 
about it one has to resolve not to be led away from 

148 



The German Attitude 

the vital points by its digressions. One of these 
points is that to which I have already made refer- 
ence in giving the Chancellor's views about it, the 
responsibility for what happened in July, 1914, 
and in particular for the decision taken on the 5th 
of that month at Potsdam. 

It is interesting to compare Tirpitz's account 
of the meeting that took place then, on the invita- 
tion of the Emperor, with that of Bethmann, 
altho the former was not present, and bases 
his judgment only on what was reported to him 
as Minister. He gives an account of what hap- 
pened which makes the meeting seem a more 
important one than the ex-Chancellor takes it to 
have been. The Admiral's view is that at this 
date what was urgently wanted was "prompt and 
frank' * action. Austria should not have been 
allowed to rush upon Serbia, however just her 
causes for anger. On the other hand the German 
Emperor should have at once and directly appealed 
to the Czar to co-operate with him in endeavoring 
to secure such a response to reason and expression 
of contrition on the part of Serbia as would have 
eased off the situation, which was full of danger. 
For, with an unfriendly Entente interesting itself, 
no war which broke out was likely to be capable 
of being kept localized. 

149 



Before the War 

Tirpitz was not in Berlin on July 5, but he 
received reports from there of what was happen- 
ing. Neither he nor von Moltke, the Chief of the 
General Staff, was consulted, but Tirpitz declares 
that the Emperor saw at Potsdam the Minister of 
War, von Falkenhayn, and also the Minister of 
the Military Cabinet, von Lyncker. If so, whether 
or not the conference was technically a Crown 
Council, the meeting was a very important one. 

Tirpitz confirms Bethmann in saying that, 
prompted by chivalrous feeling, the German 
Emperor responded to the Emperor of Austria by 
promising support and fidelity. He declares that 
the Emperor William did not consider the inter- 
vention of Russia to protect Serbia as probable, 
because he thought that the Czar would never 
support regicides, and that, besides, Russia was 
not prepared for war, either in a military or 
financial sense. Moreover, the Emperor somewhat 
optimistically presumed that France would hold 
Russia back on account of her own disadvantageous 
state of finance and her lack of heavy artillery. 
The Emperor did not refer to England; compli- 
cations with that country were not thought of. 
The Emperor's view thus was that a further 
extension of dangerous complications was unlikely. 
His hope was that Serbia would give in, but he 

150 



The German Attitude 

considered it desirable that Germany should be 
prepared in case of a different issue of the Austro- 
Serbian dispute. It was for that reason that he 
had on the 5th commanded the Chancellor, Beth- 
mann Hollweg; the Minister of War, von Falken- 
hayn; the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign 
Affairs, Zimmermann; and the Minister of the 
War Cabinet, von Lyncker,. to Potsdam. It was 
then decided that all steps should be avoided which 
would attract political attention or involve much 
expense. After this decision the Emperor, on the 
advice of the Chancellor, started on his journey to 
the North Cape, for which arrangements had 
already been made. The duty of the Chancellor 
under the circumstances was to consider any 
promise to be given to Austria from the stand- 
point of German interests, and to keep watch on 
the method of its fulfilment. The Chancellor, 
says his critic, did not hesitate to accept the 
decision of the Emperor, apparently imagining 
that Austria's position as a Great Power was 
already shaken and w T ould collapse unless she could 
insist on being compensated at the expense of the 
greedy Serbians. He probably had in his mind the 
success obtained in the earlier Balkan crisis over 
Bosnia and Herzegovina. He goes on to tell us that 
he was not informed as to what the Emperor was 

151 



Before the War 

thinking of during his tour in northern waters, but 
that he had reason to believe that he did not antici- 
pate serious danger to the peace of the world. And 
he observes, as a characteristic of the Emperor, 
that when he was not apprehensive of danger he 
would express himself without restraint about the 
traditions of his illustrious predecessors, but the 
moment matters began to look critical his became 
a hesitating mood. The Admiral thinks that if 
the Emperor had not left Berlin, and if the full 
Government machinery had been at work, means 
might have been found by the Emperor and the 
Ministry of averting the danger of war. As, how- 
ever, the Chief of the General Staff, the Head of 
the Admiralty Staff, and Tirpitz himself were kept 
away from Berlin during the following weeks, the 
matter was handled solely by the Chancellor, who, 
being in truth not sufficiently experienced in great 
European affairs, was not able to estimate the 
reliability of those who were advising him in the 
Foreign Office. * 

Von Tirpitz goes on to say that by July 11 
the Berlin Foreign Office had heard that the 
Entente had advised yielding at Belgrade. The 
Chancellor, he declares, could now have brought 
about a peaceful solution, but, convinced as he 
was that the Entente did not mean war, he drew 

152 




COUNT LEOPOLD BERCHTOLD 

MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY FROM FEB. 
1912 TO JAN. 1915. 



The German Attitude 

the shortsighted conclusion that Austria, without 
considering the Entente, might force a march into 
Serbia and yet not endanger the world's peace. 
His optimism was disastrous. On July 13 he (the 
Chancellor) was, according to Tirpitz, informed 
of the essential points in the proposed Austrian 
ultimatum. Bethmann, as already stated, says 
that he did not see the ultimatum itself until the 
22nd, when it had already been dispatched. But 
he does not say that he had been given no forecast 
of its contents from the German Ambassador at 
Vienna. Tirpitz quotes, but without giving its 
exact date, a memorandum sent to him at Tarasp 
apparently just after the 13th. It was forwarded 
from the Admiralty, and was in these terms: 
"Our Ambassador in Vienna, Herr von 
Tschirsky, has ascertained privately, as well as 
from Count Berchtold, that the ultimatum to be 
sent by Austria to Serbia will contain the follow- 
ing demands: I. A proclamation of King Peter 
to his people in which he will command them to 
abstain from greater Serbian agitation. II. Par- 
ticipation of a higher Austrian official in the 
investigation of the assassination. III. Dismissal 
and punishment of all officers and officials proved 
to be accomplices." 

Tirpitz says that his first impression, when he 
153 



Before the War 

received this document in Tar asp, was that Serbia 
could not possibly accept the terms of such an 
ultimatum. And he adds that he believed neither 
in the possibility of localizing the war nor in the 
neutrality of England. In his view the greatest 
care was required to reassure the Russian Govern- 
ment, especially as England would wish "to let 
war break out in order to establish the balance of 
power on the Continent as she understood it." 
But the Chancellor expressed the wish that he 
should not return to Berlin, for his doing so might 
give rise to remarks. If this be so, it seems to 
have been a very unfortunate step. The Emperor 
and his most important Ministers should all have 
been in Berlin at such a time. Bethmann's advice 
appears intelligible only if he thought, as is quite 
possible, that he could himself handle the negotia- 
tions best if the Emperor and Tirpitz were both 
out of the way. If so, he was not successful. He 
did not in the end respond to Sir Edward Grey's 
wish for a conference, and earlier he had failed to 
bridle the impulsive ally who was dashing wildly 
about. It looks as tho, however good his 
intentions may have been, he was taking terrible 
risks. 

Now this was the crucial period. Grey was 
doing his very utmost to avert war, and was even 

154 



The German Attitude 

pressing Serbia to accept the bulk of what was in 
the ultimatum. As to his real intentions, I may, 
without presumption, claim to be better informed 
than Admiral von Tirpitz. Sir Edward Grey and 
I had been intimate friends for over a quarter of 
a century before the period in which the Admiral, 
who, so far as I know, never saw him, diagnoses 
the state of his intentions. During the eight years 
previous to July, 1914, we had been closely 
associated and were working as colleagues in the 
Cabinets of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and 
Mr. Asquith. And in that July, throughout the 
weeks in question, Sir Edward was staying with 
me in my house in London, and considering with 
me the telegrams and incidents, great or small. 

It is a pure myth that he had, at the back of 
his mind, any such intentions as the Admiral 
imagines. He was working with every fiber put in 
action for the keeping of the peace. He was press- 
ing for that in St. Petersburg, in Paris, in Berlin, 
in Vienna, and in Belgrade. He was not in the 
least influenced either by jealousy of Germany's 
growth or by fear of a naval engagement with her, 
as Tirpitz infers. All he wanted was to fulfil what, 
for him, was the sacred trust that had been com- 
mitted to him, the duty of throwing the whole 
weight of England's influence on the side of peace. 

155 



Before the War 

And that was not less the view of Mr. Asquith, 
whom I knew equally intimately, and it was the 
view of all my colleagues in the Cabinet. 

Germany was going ahead with giant strides 
in commerce and industry, but we had not the 
slightest title to be jealous or to complain when 
she was only reaping the fruits of her own science 
and concentration on peaceful arts. I had said 
this myself emphatically to the Emperor at Berlin 
in 1906 in a conversation the record of which has 
already been given. There was no responsible 
person in this country who dreamt, either in 1914 
or in the years before then, of interfering with 
Germany's Fleet development merely because it 
could protect her growing commerce. What 
responsible people did object to was the method 
of those who belonged to the Tirpitz school. The 
peace was to be preserved; I give that school full 
credit for this desire; but preserved on what 
terms? On the terms that the German was to be 
so strong by land and sea that he could swagger 
down the High Street of the world, making his 
will prevail at every turn. 

But this was not the worst, so far as England 
was concerned. The school of von Tirpitz would 
not be content unless they could control England's 
sea power. They would have accepted a two-to- 

156 



The German Attitude 

three keel standard because it would have been 
enough to enable them to secure allies and to 
break up the Entente. Now it was vital to us 
that Germany should not succeed in attaining this 
end. For if she did succeed in attaining it, not 
only our security from invasion, but our transport 
of food and raw materials, would be endangered. 
With a really friendly Germany or with a League 
of Nations the situation would have mattered much 
less. It was the policy of the school to which 
Tirpitz and the Emperor himself belonged which 
made the situation one of growing danger and the 
Entente a necessity, for these were days when 
other nations near us were beginning to organize 
great battle-fleets. If Bethmann Hollweg's policy 
had prevailed there would have been no necessity 
for any such Entente as was the only way of 
safety for us. But he could not carry his policy 
through, earnestly tho he desired to do so, and 
thus provide the true way to permanent peaceful 
relations. I think he believed that the only use 
Britain ever contemplated making of her Navy, 
should peace continue, was that of a policeman 
who co-operates with others in watching lest any- 
one should jostle his neighbor on the maritime 
highway. He believed in the Sittlichkeit, w T hich 
we here mean when we speak of "good form." 

157 



Before the War 

But that was not the faith of his critics in Berlin. 
They wanted to have Russia, and if possible France 
also, along with their navies, on the side of 
Germany. Peace, yes, but peace compelled by 
fear — a very unwholesome and unstable kind of 
peace, and deadly for the interests of an island 
nation. Hence the Entente! 

What we had to do was to prevent, if we could, 
the Tirpitz school from getting its way, and we 
tried this not without some measure of success. 
Even to-day our pacifists now join with chauvinist 
critics of a policy which was pursued steadily for 
many years, and was that of Campbell-Bannerman , 
as well as of Asquith. They reproach us for having 
entered on our path without having adequately 
increased our naval and military resources. The , 
reproach is not a just one. It is founded on a ,| 
complete misconception of the true military situa- i 
tion. It is only necessary to read carefully through ., 
Admiral von Tirpitz's very instructive volume to 
see that he took precisely the same view as we 
did, and as was held to unswervingly by our 
Committee of Imperial Defense. England's 
might lay in final analysis in her sea power. She 
needed also a small but very perfect army, capable 
of high rapidity in concentration by the side of 
the great French Army, in order to prevent the 

158 



The German Attitude 

coasts of France close to our own from being occu- 
pied by an enemy invading French territory. 

In his book the Admiral refers to a letter I 
wrote to The Times on December 10, 1918, 
pointing this out and the grounds on which the 
strategical conception was based. The Admiral 
expresses his agreement, and says that it was a fatal 
blunder of the German Highest Command not to 
use their submarine power at the very outbreak of 
the war to prevent our Expeditionary Force from 
crossing the Channel and co-operating in resisting 
the German advance towards Calais. From there 
Germany could have commanded the Channel 
and bombarded London. 

So he says, and we were quite aware all along 
that he might w T ell think so. The other thing that 
he makes plain by implication is that the direct 
invasion of England was never contemplated by 

1 Germany in the face of our command of the sea. 

1 I had long ago satisfied myself that this was the 
German view, by a study of their military text- 
books and from conversations with high German 
officers. But, what was more important than what 
I personally thought, the Committee of Imperial 
Defense, on which I sat regularly during eight 
years, was clear about it, and this after close study, 
and after hearing what the most eminent exponents 

159 



Before the War 

in this country of a different view had to urge 
before them. 

Consequently our military policy was not doubt- 
ful. No doubt it would have been a nice thing 
could we have possessed in 1914 a great army 
fashioned and trained, not for firing rifles on the 
seashore, but for a struggle on French and Belgian 
soil. But such an army would have taken two 
generations at least to raise and train in peace time, 
and if we had laid out our money on it after 1870 
instead of on ships, we should not have had the 
sea power which Tirpitz says gave us "bulldog" 
strength. In strategy and in military organization 
you can not successfully bestride two horses at once. 
He who would accomplish anything has to limit 
himself. Possibly it was because this was not 
clearly kept in view even in Germany that the 
volume before us is an exposition of a thesis which 
is novel in these islands, that it was not England 
that was unprepared, but Germany herself. For 
the confusion of objectives that led to this Tirpitz 
blames Bethmann's peace policy, the parsimony 
of the Reichstag, and the Emperor's failure to 
attain to clear notions about war aims. 

He criticizes me for saying that there was in 
Germany before 1914 a war party alongside of a 
peace party. It was really only the Bethmann 

ii6o 



The German Attitude 

group, he declares, that believed in peace being 
built on anything else than preponderance in 
armed power. The tradition of the German nation 
and the view of all sensible statesmen in Germany, 
e.g., Prince Biilow and the Emperor himself as a 
rule, was that the foundation of a lasting peace 
could only be laid with armaments. Now if 
this is so it is plain how the war came about. The 
"shining armor" oration in Austria, some years 
before war broke out, was simply one among many 
illustrations which so alarmed civilized nations that 
they huddled together for protection against this 
school of statesmen. Bethmann's was the true 
policy had he been allowed to carry it out. It is 
possible that he thought he had a better chance of 
carrying it out than could have been the case were 
they to be present, when he got the Emperor and 
Tirpitz to keep away from Berlin after the meeting 
at Potsdam on July 5. Unfortunately he under- 
estimated the tendencies of Berchtold, Conrad von 
Hoetzendorf, Forgasch, and others in Vienna, 
who, with no misgivings such as those of Tirpitz 
as to the outcome, had determined on "los- 
gelien" The proximate cause of the war was 
Austrian policy. A secondary cause was the 
absence of any effective attempt at control from 
Berlin. The third and principal cause was the 

161 



Before the War 

Tirpitz theory of how to keep the peace, the theory 
that had come down from Frederick the Great and 
his father, and was barely a safe one in the hands 
of even a Bismarck. 

The only circumstances that could have justified 
Germany in her tacit encouragement to Austria 
to take a highly dangerous step — a step which was 
almost certain to bring Russia, France, and Eng- 
land into sharp conflict with the Central Powers — 
would have been clear proof that the three Entente 
nations were preparing to seize a chance and to en- 
circle and attack Germany or Austria or both. 

Now for this there is no foundation whatever. 
Russia, whatever Isvolsky and other Russian 
statesmen may have said in moments of irritation 
over the affair of Bosnia and Herzegovina, did not 
want to plunge into war; France did not desire 
anything of the kind ; and, as for England, nothing 
was more remote from her wishes. It was only in 
order to preserve the general peace that we had 
entered the Entente, and the method of the 
Entente policy, the getting rid of all specific 
causes of difference, was one which had nothing 
objectionable in it. We urged Germany also to 
enter upon this path with us. We offered to help 
her in her progress toward the attainment of a 
"place in the sun." The negotiations which took 

162 



The German Attitude 

place with Sir Edward Grey in London after my 
return from Berlin in 1912 are evidence of our 
sincerity in this, for they culminated in agreement 
on the terms of a detailed Treaty, under which a 
vast number of territorial questions were settled 
to mutual satisfaction. We did not either in 1912, 
as Admiral von Tirpitz appears to imagine, in the 
conversation at the Schloss, or later on, offer 
territory that was not our own but belonged to 
Portugal, or Belgium, or France. The contrary 
is evident from the fact that the British .Govern- 
ment pressed Germany to consent to the immediate 
publication of the draft Treaty, agreed early in 
1914, when signed. All we did on both occasions 
was to propose exchanges with Germany of terri- 
tory that was ours for territory that was hers, to 
undertake not to compete for the purchase of 
certain other territory that might come into the 
market, in consideration of a corresponding 
undertaking on her part, and to agree about 
zones within which each nation should distribute 
its industrial energies and give financial assistance 
to undertakings. 

The gallant Admiral gives an account of the 
meeting which took place on February 9, 1912, 
in the Emperor's Cabinet room in the Schloss be- 
tween himself, the Emperor and myself. He 

163 



Before the War 

represents me as making a "generous offer of 
colonial territories which the English neither 
possessed nor of which they had the least right of 
disposal, in order to flatter the Kaiser's desires." 
Now in this impression the Admiral was wholly- 
wrong. What I spoke of was what I have just 
referred to, exchanges of parts of our own terri- 
tory for parts belonging to Germany, and under- 
takings such as I have just referred to. These 
things I had considered the previous day with the 
Chancellor, and I do not think the Emperor was 
in the least under the impression which von Tirpitz 
entertained. The matter was indeed not one with 
which the Department of the Minister of Marine 
was likely to be familiar. My suggestions were 
made in accordance with my instructions, and 
were, of course, bona fide in all respects. What 
I was pressing for was the means for making 
possible a slackening in naval construction on both 
sides, and for acceptance of the Entente and of 
our position in it. What I desired was to extend 
its friendly relations so as to bring Germany and 
Austria and Italy within them and get rid of 
anxiety about the balance of power and the growth 
of armaments. I think the Emperor throughout 
understood this, and certainly the Chancellor did. 
Tirpitz appears to have suspected, in an attitude in 

164 



The German Attitude 

which I was only aiming at being friendly and 
even cordial, concealment of an encircling and 
aggressive purpose. After studying his book I do 
not wonder! When one rises from reading it one 
understands the fixity of an idea, which amounted 
to an obsession, and compelled him to believe in 
the necessity for what would have amounted to the 
overthrow of Britain as a Great Power. 

From the Emperor, on this as on other occa- 
sions, I met with nothing but the kindliest of 
receptions. Admiral von Tirpitz describes the 
luncheon party which preceded the conference in 
the Cabinet Room. He speaks of a certain "span" 
mng" or tension which prevailed during the 
luncheon which the Emperor and Empress gave 
to the Berlin Cabinet and myself, and of restraint 
in the conversation. I can not say that I perceived 
any of these things, but then, of course, I was a 
foreigner. What I do remember was the general 
kindly feeling and the evident satisfaction produced 
by the production of the famous red champagne 
and great cigars with which the Emperor regaled 
his guests. For myself, special distinction was 
reserved. For, before proceeding to business, the 
Emperor read to me Goethe's poem, Ilmenau, 
of which he thought I might like to be reminded 
before we sat down to our task. He then 

165 



Before the War 

observed that, out of consideration for Tirpitz, 
we must confer in German, while on the other 
hand this would be the harder on me because 
the naval matters with which we had to deal 
were not in my department, as they were in 
that of the Admiral. This was, of course, 
true. And then, in compensation for disadvan- 
tages which, as he said, would otherwise be unfair, 
he smilingly remarked that he had a plan for 
adjusting the balance of power on this occasion. 
He insisted on my occupying the Imperial chair, 
which stood at the head of the narrow Cabinet 
table, while His Majesty himself should sit on an 
ordinary chair on my left hand and the Admiral 
on another on my right. I thought that these 
arrangements suggested the possibility of a tough 
controversy, and as far as the Admiral was con- 
cerned it proved to be so. For the discussion lasted 
for two and three-quarter hours, and was fairly 
close. I said throughout that, while I came here 
to explore the ground with the authority of my 
Sovereign and his Cabinet, I had come, not to 
make a treaty at that stage, but on a preliminary 
voyage of discovery with a view to taking back 
materials with which the Cabinet of St. James's 
might be able to construct one, and that I had been 
delighted with the graciousness of my reception. 

166 



The German Attitude 

I mention this because the Admiral appears not 
to have quite understood my position. I have no 
doubt that the Emperor understood it. 

At the end of the conversation I felt for once 
a little tired, and was glad when the Emperor 
asked von Tirpitz to drive me back to the Hotel 
Bristol. I thought the manner of the latter during 
the journey highly polite and correct, but not 
wholly sympathetic. I can only say that on my 
part I had endeavored to put every card I had 
upon the table. 

I have now touched on what seem to me the 
salient points in both of the volumes by these two 
famous statesmen. I have, I hope, brought out 
sufficiently the fact that on their own showing they 
were pursuing contradictory policies, and that it 
was the consequent failure to follow a policy that 
was consistent and continuous that in the end led 
Germany to the slippery slope down which she 
glided into war. The circumstances of the world 
before and in 1914 were so difficult, the piling up 
of armaments had been so great, that nothing but 
the utmost caution could secure a safe path. I 
believe the Emperor and Bethmann to have desired 
wholeheartedly the preservation of the peace. But 
to that end they took inadequate means, and the 
result was a disastrous failure to accomplish it. 

167 



Before the War 

The disturbing presence of the policy of relying 
on a preponderance in power over England, to be 
gained by a great navy, to the side of which the 
smaller navies would be attracted, imposed on 
England the necessity of guarding against what 
was menacing the national life. As the outcome of 
this situation she was compelled, so long as Ger- 
many insisted on developing her naval policy, to sit 
down and take thought. The result of her delibera- 
tions may be summed up in eight propositions: 

1. It was necessary, if the safety of England by 
sea was not to be put in jeopardy, that she should enter 
into real and close friendships with other nations. 

2. The great attraction to these other nations would 
lie in the maintenance of British sea power. 

3. While the power of the British Navy was of the 
first importance to France, she might also, through no 
fault of her own, be placed in such peril as made it 
desirable that we should be able to render her help by 
land also. 

4. But the military forces of France and her ally, 
Russia, were great enough to make it reasonable to 
estimate that a small army from England would be a 
sufficient addition to enable France to break the shock 
of an aggressive attack on her. 

5. Even on purely military grounds it was impossible 
for Great Britain to raise in time of peace a great army 

168 



The German Attitude 

for use on the Continent. The necessity of recruiting 
and educating the necessary corps of professional officers 
required to train and command such an army would have 
occupied at least two generations if the task were to be 
taken in hand in peace time. But it was possible to 
organize and prepare a small but highly trained Ex- 
peditionary Force, provided we discarded some of our 
old military traditions, and studied modern requirements 
and objectives in consultation with those who were best 
able to throw light on them. 

6. Altho more than modern and scientific military 
organization on a comparatively small scale was not in 
our power, we could in carrying out even this much lay 
foundations which would enable expansion in time of war 
to take place. 

7. In the result, as was believed here, and as Admiral 
von Tirpitz himself seems to have anticipated, sea power 
and capacity for blockade would decide the issue of the 
war. In this respect Germany seemed less well prepared 
than Great Britain. 

8. The last thing wished for was war, and if we had 
to enter upon it we should do so only in defense of our 
own vital interests, as well as those of the other En- 
tente Powers. Our entry, if it was to come, must be im- 
mediate and unhesitating. For if we delayed Germany 
might succeed in occupying the northern coast of France, 
and in impairing our security by sea. 

I will conclude this chapter by appending an 
estimate of the Emperor William II, which is 

169 



Before the War 

worth comparing with that of his German Ministers 
already referred to. 

In the chapter on William II in Count 
Czernin's book on "The World War" there is 
a passage which may, I think, turn out to be pretty 
near the truth about the late Emperor's mood: 
"Altho the Emperor was always very power- 
ful in speech and gesture, still, during the war he 
was much less independent in his actions than is 
usually assumed, and, in my opinion, this is one 
of the principal reasons that gave rise to a mis- 
taken understanding of all the Emperor's adminis- 
trative activities. Ear more than the public 
imagine, he was a driven rather than a driving 
factor, and if the Entente to-day claims the right 
of being prosecutor and judge in one person in 
order to bring the Emperor to his trial, it is unjust 
and an error, as, both preceding and during the 
war, the Emperor William never played the part 
attributed to him by the Entente: 

"The unfortunate man has gone through 
much, and more is, perhaps, in store for him. 

"He has been carried too high, and can not 
escape a terrible fall. Fate seems to have chosen 
him to expiate a sin which, if it exists at all, is 
not so much his as that of his country and his 
times. The Byzantine atmosphere in Germany 

170 




COUNT OTTOKAR CZERNIN 

MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY FROM DEC. 
1916 TO APRIL, 1918. 



The German Attitude 

was the ruin of Emperor William; it enveloped 
him and clung to him like a creeper to a tree; a 
vast crowd of flatterers and fortune-seekers who 
deserted him in the hour of trial. The Emperor 
William was merely a particularly distinctive rep- 
resentative of his class. All modern monarchs 
suffer from the disease; but it was more highly 
developed in the Emperor William, and therefore 
more obvious than in others. Accustomed from 
his youth to the subtle poison of flattery, at the 
head of one of the greatest and mightiest States 
in the world, possessing almost unlimited power, 
he succumbed to the fatal lot that awaits men 
who feel the earth recede from under their feet, 
and who begin to believe in their Divine 
semblance. 

"He is expiating a crime which was not of 
his making. He can take with him in his solitude 
the consolation that his only desire was for the 
best. 

"It has already been mentioned that all the 
warlike speeches flung into the world by the 
Emperor were due to a mistaken understanding 
of their effect. I allow that the Emperor wished 
to create a sensation, even to terrify people, but 
he also wished to act on the principle of si vis pacem, 
para helium, and by emphasizing the military 

171 



Before the War 

power of Germany he endeavored to prevent the 
many envious enemies of his Empire from declar- 
ing war on him. 

"It can not be denied that this attitude was 
often both unfortunate and mistaken, and that it 
contributed to the outbreak of war; but it is 
asserted that the Emperor was devoid of the dolus 
of making war, that he said and did things by which 
he unintentionally stirred up war. 

"Had there been men in Germany ready to 
point out to the Emperor the injurious effects of 
his behavior and to make him feel the growing 
mistrust of him throughout the world, had there 
been not one or two but dozens of such men, it 
would assuredly have made an impression on the 
Emperor. It is equally true that of all the in- 
habitants of the earth the German is the one least 
capable of adapting himself to the mentality of 
other people, and, as a matter of fact, there were 
perhaps but few in the immediate entourage of 
the Emperor who recognized the growing anxiety 
of the world. Perhaps many of them who so 
continuously extolled the Emperor were really 
honestly of opinion that his behavior was quite 
correct. It is, nevertheless, impossible not to 
believe that among the many clever politicians of 
the last decade there were some who had a clear 

172 



The German Attitude 

grasp of the situation, and the fact remains that 
in order to spare the Emperor and themselves 
they had not the courage to be harsh with him 
and tell him the truth to his face. These are not 
reproaches, but reminiscences which should not be 
superfluous at a time when the Emperor is to be 
made the scapegoat of the whole world." 



173 



THE MILITARY PREPARATIONS 



CHAPTER IV 

THE MILITARY PREPARATIONS 

When more time has passed and heads have be- 
come cooler the critics will have to decide whether 
Great Britain was as fully prepared as she ought 
to have been for the possibility of the great struggle 
into which she had to enter in August, 1914. 
Hundreds of speeches have been made, and still 
more articles have been written, to demonstrate 
that she was caught wholly unready. On the other 
hand authoritative writers in Germany have made 
the counter-assertion that she had prepared 
copiously, not merely to defend herself, but to 
join in encircling and crushing Germany. 

I shall venture to submit some reasons for say- 
ing that neither of these views is the true one. 
During the whole of the period between the com- 
mencement of 1906 and the autumn of 1914 I 
sat on the Committee of Imperial Defense and 
took an active part in its deliberations. For over 
six of these eight years I was Minister for War, 
and I was in continuous co-operation with the 
colleagues who were, like myself, engaged in 

177 



Before the War 

carrying into execution the methods which we had 
gradually worked out. Such as the plans were, the 
preparations which they required were completed 
before the war. As to the bulk of these prepara- 
tions I speak from direct knowledge. 

The Expeditionary Force, the Territorial 
Force, and the Special Reserve had been organ- 
ized under my own eye, by soldiers who had 
studied modern war upon what was in this country 
a wholly new principle. Before they took matters 
in hand not only was there no divisional organiza- 
tion, but hardly a brigade could have been sent to 
the Continent without being recast. For there 
used to be a peace organization that was different 
from the organization that was required for war, 
and to convert the former into the latter meant a 
delay that would have been deadly. Swift mobili- 
zation, like that of the Germans even in 1870, was 
in these older days impracticable. 

All this had been changed for the Regular 
Army at home by the end of 1908, and it was after 
that year easy to mobilize. Other changes, also of 
a sweeping character, had been made to complete 
the new structure. On August 4, 1914, Lord 
Kitchener took delivery of an army in being, 
small, but not inferior in quality to the best that 
the enemy possessed. With the creation of the 

178 



The Military Preparations 

new armies, for which the Expeditionary Force 
was the pattern — and, indeed, with the general 
management of the war — I had very little to do. 
But I saw a good deal of Lord Kitchener, enough 
to impress me from the day when he became War 
Minister with his extraordinary individuality and 
his remarkable courage and energy, and to make 
me feel what an invaluable asset his personality was 
for putting heart into the British nation. 

I have referred to my own and earlier part in 
the matter only to make plain that I do not speak 
about it from mere hearsay. And to say this has 
been necessary, because I shall have to submit 
some observations which, if true, do not har- 
monize with assertions made by some of the critics 
of the successive Governments which were at work 
on the business of preparation for possible con- 
tingencies between 1906 and 1914. I will, how- 
ever, begin by making these critics a present of 
a definite admission. We never intended to create 
an army capable of invading or encircling 
Germany, and we should, in our own view, have 
found ourselves unable to do so even had we 
desired any such thing. 

Our purpose was quite a different one. It was 
purely defensive. We knew how high a level of 
military organization had been attained in France. 

i/9 



Before the War 

She had a large army, an army not so large as 
that of Germany, but comparable with it in 
quality. Her ally, Russia, also had a large army 
on the other side of Germany, altho one not so 
perfectly organized as that of France. By adding 
to the French military defensive forces a com- 
paratively small British Expeditionary Force of 
very high quality, organized as far as possible on 
the principle about which von der Goltz, in the 
introduction to his famous book, "The Nation in 
Arms," had written, we could provide what that 
eminent writer had suggested would be formid- 
able, could it be properly organized, even against 
the German masses of troops. In the introduction 
to his "Nation in Arms" he had declared that, 
"Looking forward into the future we seem to 
feel the coming of a time when the armed millions 
of the present will have played out their part. A 
new Alexander will arise who, with a small body 
of well-equipped and skilled warriors, will drive 
the impotent hordes before him, when, in their 
eagerness to multiply, they shall have overstepped 
all proper bounds, have lost internal cohesion, and, 
like the green-banner army of China, have become 
transformed into a numberless but effete host of 
Philistines." 

This, of course, did not mean that the little 
1 80 



The Military Preparations 

Expeditionary Force could by itself cope with the 
admirably organized and enormous German Army, 
but it did point to the growing importance in 
these times of high morale and quality, and to 
the value that even a small force, if sufficiently 
long and closely trained, might prove to have, if 
placed in a proper position alongside the excellent 
soldiers of France. A careful study had made us 
think that the addition of even a small force of 
such quality to those of France and Russia would 
provide the combined armies with a good chance of 
defeating any German attempt at the invasion and 
dismemberment of France. 

But in addition to and apart from all this, the 
British Navy had been raised before 1914 to a 
strength unexampled in its history, and Mr. 
Churchill had for the first time introduced in the 
autumn of 1911 the valuable principle of a war 
staff, fashioned with a view to the systematic study 
of modern naval war in co-operation with the 
forces on land. 

These naval reforms had helped to confer the 
fresh power which took shape in the blockade 
which was in the end to prove decisive in the 
struggle. The heads of the newly organized Mili- 
tary General Staff met the representatives of 
the Admiralty War Staff at systematically held 

181 



Before the War 

meetings of the Committee of Imperial Defense, 
under the presidency of the successive Prime 
Ministers — first of Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- 
man and then of Mr. Asquith. Not only were the 
Ministers at the head of the Admiralty and the 
War Office present to listen to what their experts 
had to say and to assist in arriving at conclusions 
on the questions discussed at these meetings, but 
other Ministers (including Lord Crewe, Sir Ed- 
ward Grey, Lord Morley, Mr. Lloyd George, and 
Lord Harcourt) attended regularly. The func- 
tion of this committee was to consider strategical 
difficulties with which the nation might conceivably 
find itself confronted, and to work out the solutions. 
It was a committee the members of which were 
selected and summoned by the Prime Minister, to 
whom it was advisory. He determined the sub- 
jects to be investigated. Secrecy was of course es- 
sential, excepting so far as the Cabinet was con- 
cerned. The presence of the non-military Ministers 
to whom I have referred was a proper guarantee 
that from the Cabinet there was no desire to with- 
hold information. Possible operations on the Con- 
tinent of our army occupied much of the time of 
the committee. About the propriety of the con- 
versations which took place between members of the 
General Staffs of France and England questions 

182 



The Military Preparations 

have been raised. But these conversations were 
concerned with purely technical matters, and 
doubts as to their justification will hardly arise in 
the minds of people who are aware what modern 
war implies in the way of preliminary inquiries as 
to its conditions. 

We were not engaging in any secret under- 
taking. We were merely providing what modern 
military requirements had rendered essential. 
Without study beforehand by a General Staff 
military operations in these days are bound to 
fail. If at any time we had, by any chance what- 
ever, to operate in France it was essential that our 
generals should possess long in advance the knowl- 
edge that was requisite, and this could only be 
obtained with the assistance of the General Staff 
of France itself. We committed ourselves to no 
undertaking of any kind, and it was from the first 
put in writing that we could not do so. The con- 
versations were just the natural and informal out- 
come of our close friendship with France. 

The French had said that if it was to be 
regarded as even possible that we should come to 
their assistance in resisting an attack, which might, 
moreover, result if successful in great prejudice to 
our own security in the Channel, we should find 
this study vital. Our General Staff took the same 

183 



Before the War 

view, and at the request of Sir Edward Grey, who 
had written to him, I saw Sir Henry Campbell- 
Bannerman at his house in London in January, 
1906. He was a very cautious man, but he was also 
an old War Minister. He at once saw the point, 
and he gave me authority for directing the Staff 
at the War Office to take the necessary steps. He 
naturally laid down that the study proposed was to 
be carefully guarded, so far as any possible claim 
of commitment was concerned, that it was not to 
go beyond the limits of purely General Staff work, 
and further that it should not be talked about. 
The inquiry into conditions thus set on foot was 
conducted by the three successive generals who 
occupied the position of Director of Military 
Operations — the late General Grierson, General 
Ewart, and General Wilson. Each of these dis- 
tinguished soldiers from time to time explained 
the progress made in working out conceivable 
plans for using the Expeditionary Force in France 
and in more distant regions, to the full Committee 
of Imperial Defense, and obtained its provisional 
approval. 

I should like to say how much the Committee 
of Imperial Defense, which was originally a very 
valuable contribution made by Mr. Balfour, when 
Prime Minister, to the organization of our pre- 

184 



The Military Preparations 

paredness for war, owed to its secretaries. To such 
men as Admiral Sir Charles Ottley and, after his 
time, to Colonel Sir Maurice Hankey, the nation is 
under a great debt, and it was the least that could 
be done to include the latter in the thanks of Parlia- 
ment to the sailors and soldiers to whom our actual 
success was due. It was he who, assisted by a 
brilliant staff on which the late Colonel Grant 
Duff was prominent, planned and prepared that 
remarkable War Book, which was completed in 
excellent time before the outbreak of hostilities, 
and which contained full instructions for every 
department of Government which could be called 
on to assist if war broke out. Not only the 
drafts of the necessary orders, but those of the 
necessary telegrams, were written out in advance 
under Sir Maurice Hankey's instructions. He and 
Sir Charles Ottley, themselves sailors, formed real 
links between the navy and the army, and did an 
enormous amount of work in co-ordinating war 
objectives. 

Of the Navy I need say nothing, for its prep- 
arations are well understood. Nor need I say 
much of the details in the reorganization of the 
army. The general principle of this was to com- 
plete the Cardwell system by shaping the home 
battalions into six great divisions, and so providing 

i85 



Before the War 

them with transport, munitions, stores, and medical 
and other equipment, as to make them instantly- 
ready for war. The characteristic of the old Brit- 
ish Army, as it was up to 1907, was, as I have 
already observed, that it lived in peace formations 
only, in small and detached units which would have 
to be refashioned into quite different formations 
before they could be ready to be sent to fight. 

This state of things involved much delay in 
mobilization. A careful inquiry made in 1906 dis- 
closed that in order to put even 80,000 men on the 
Continent, a period which might be well over two 
months was the minimum required. Besides this 
great difficulty, the other items to which I have 
referred as required for the six divisions were not 
there in any shape even approaching sufficiency. 
The artillery too was deficient. 

There is no more amusing myth than the one 
according to which the horse and field artillery 
were reduced. The batteries which could be made 
instantly effective for war were, in fact, raised from 
forty-two to eighty-one. The personnel of this 
artillery was increased by a third for mobilization. 
For the first time the horse and field artillery was 
given the modern organization which Car dwell had 
not been able to give it. The establishments had 
been merely peace establishments. There were 

186 



The Military Preparations 

ninety-nine batteries which could parade about 
on ceremonial occasions, but if war had broken 
out they would have had to be rolled up, and 
the personnel of fifty-seven of them taken to 
produce the mobilized forty-two which were all 
that could be put into the field. The difficulty 
was got over by the organization of eighteen 
of the ninety-nine into training brigades, and 
the additional men needed for the mobilization of 
eighty-one fighting batteries were thus obtained. 
No doubt some of the artillery officers did not like 
being set to training work, and complained that 
they were being reduced. But it was a reduction 
from unreal work of parade in order to double 
fighting efficiency. Not a man or a gun of the 
regular horse and field artillery was ever reduced in 
any shape or form, and not only were the effective 
batteries largely increased, but over 150 serviceable 
batteries were created and made part of the Second 
Line, or Territorial, Army. This was a force 
which could be used either for home defense or for 
expansion of an expeditionary force of Regulars. 
The Militia, which was not under obligation to 
serve abroad, was abolished, and its substance was 
converted into third regular battalions, organized 
for the purpose of training and providing drafts to 
meet the wastage of war in the first and second 

187 



Before the War 

regular battalions of their regiments. Some of 
those third battalions are said to have trained and 
sent out as many as twelve thousand men apiece 
in the course of the war. 

All these things were done under the direction 
of such young and modern soldiers as Sir Douglas 
Haig on the General Staff side, and as Sir John 
Cowans on the administrative side. Both of these 
officers were brought home from India for the 
purpose. Sir Herbert Miles, as Quartermaster- 
General, and Sir Stanley von Donop, as Master- 
General of the Ordnance, also rendered much help. 
The newly organized General Staff thought the 
plans out under the direction, first of Sir Neville 
Lyttelton, and then of Sir William Nicholson, its 
successive chiefs. The latter and Sir Douglas 
Haig in addition worked out, in consultation 
with the representatives of the Dominions, the 
organization of their troops in units and with staffs 
and weapons corresponding as nearly as was prac- 
ticable to our own. Systematic conferences be- 
tween the British and Dominion War and other 
Ministers prepared the ground for this. Sir 
Wilfrid Laurier and General Botha and others of 
the Dominion Ministers came to London and 
co-operated. 

It is sometimes said that all these things were 
188 



The Military Preparations 

very well, but that we should have at once raised 
a much larger army, as in the course of the war we 
ultimately had to do. The answer is that in a time 
of peace we could not possibly have raised a large 
army on the Continental scale. If we had tried to 
we should have made a miserable and possibly 
disastrous failure. The utmost we could do toward 
it was to provide the organization in which the com- 
paratively small force which was all we could create 
might be expanded after a war broke out. 

How this nucleus organization, on the basis 
of which the later expansions took place, was 
fashioned so as to afford a general pattern, anyone 
may see who chooses to expend a shilling on the 
purchase of the little volume called "Field Service 
Regulations, Part II." This piece of work took 
nearly three years to prepare. With the organiza- 
tion of which I have spoken, which was made in 
accordance with its principles, the whole of the 
task of recasting the British Army was performed 
by 1911. 

What we had by that time attained was the 
power to send an army of, not 100,000 men, which 
was all that had originally been suggested, but of 
160,000, to a place of concentration opposite the 
Belgian frontier, and to have it concentrated there 
within a time which was fifteen days in 1911, but 

189 



Before the War 

was a little later reduced to twelve. No German 
army could mobilize and concentrate at such a dis- 
tance more rapidly. So far as I know none of the 
necessary details were overlooked, and the time- 
tables and arrangements for the concentration 
worked out, when the moment for their use came, 
without a hitch. What had been done was to take 
the old-fashioned British Army and to rid it of 
superfluous fat, to develop muscle in place of mere 
flesh, and to put the whole force into proper 
training. If the warrior looked slender he was at 
least as well prepared for the ring as science could 
make him. 

It is said that this army ought to have been 
provided from the first with more heavy artillery. 
But the reason why its artillery, and that of the 
French armies also, were of a comparatively light 
pattern was not due to any notion of economy or 
to civilian interference. We had enough money, 
even in those difficult days, for every necessary 
purpose. 

The real reason was that the General Staffs of 
both the French and the British Armies had advised 
that the campaign would probably be one in which 
swiftness in moving troops would prove the deter- 
mining factor. Heavy artillery, and even any large 
number of the ponderous machine-guns of that 

190 



The Military Preparations 

period (the Lewis gun had not yet appeared), 
would have been a serious impediment to such 
mobility. What was anticipated was a series of 
great battles. "It was supposed by certain 
soldiers," says a well-informed military critic 
(Colonel A'Court Repington, at page 276 of his 
"Vestigia") , "that the war against Germany would 
be decided by the fighting of some seven great bat- 
tles en rase campagne, where heavies would be a 
positive encumbrance." 

So far the staffs proved to be right, for in the 
early period of the war mobility did count for a 
very great deal, and it was not until later that 
trench warfare became the dominant factor, a 
stage for which even the Germans themselves, as 
we now know, from the memoirs of Admiral 
Tirpitz and other books, were not adequately pre- 
pared in point of guns, or of shells and powder, 
either. 

It is said that we in Great Britain ought, before 
entering on the Entente, to have provided an army, 
not of 160,000, but of 2,000,000 men. And it is 
remarked that this is what we had to do in the 
end. This suggestion does not, however, bear 
scrutiny. No doubt it would have been a great 
advantage if, in addition to our tremendous navy, 
we could have produced, at the outbreak of the war, 

191 



Before the War 

2,000,000 men, so trained as to be the equals in 
this respect of German troops, and properly- 
fashioned into the great divisions that were neces- 
sary, with full equipment and auxiliary services. 
But to train the recruits, and to command such an 
army when fashioned, would have required a very 
great corps of professional officers of high military 
education, many times as large as we had actually 
raised. How were these to have been got? 

I sometimes read speeches, made even by 
officers who have served with distinction at the head 
of their men in the field, which express regret that 
the British nation was so shortsighted as not to have 
provided such an army before the war. They point 
to the effort it made later on with such success 
during the war. But to raise armies under the 
stress of war, when the people submit cheerfully 
to compulsion, and when highly intelligent civilian 
men of business readily quit their occupations to 
be trained as rapidly as possible for the work 
of every kind of officer, is one thing. To do it in 
peace time is quite another. I doubt whether 
more was possible in this direction than, in the 
days prior to the war, to organize the Officers' 
Training Corps, which contained over twenty 
thousand partially prepared young men, and began 
at once to expand to yet larger dimensions from 

192 



The Military Preparations 

the day when war broke out. For the corps of 
matured officers, required to train recruits and to 
command them in war when organized in their 
units, would have had to consist of soldiers, them- 
selves highly trained in military organization, who 
had devoted their lives to this work as a profession. 
It takes many years in peace time to train such 
officers. Because they must be professional, they 
can only be recruited under a voluntary system. 

Now, before the war it was difficult enough to 
recruit even so many as the number we then had 
got, a number totally inadequate for any army 
larger than the small one we actually put into 
shape at home. Every source had been tried in 
my time by the able administrative generals who 
were working under me at the War Office. I say 
"administrative generals," for here comes in the 
source of the confusion which at times leads not a 
few — including some whose military training has 
been exclusively in the leading of troops and in 
strategy and tactics — to miss the point. 

Under the modern military principle, which 
is the secret of rapidity and efficiency in mobiliza- 
tion, duties are carefully denned and divided. 
The General Staff does not administer, and is not 
trained in the business of administration. This 
kind of military business is entrusted to the 

193 



Before the War 

administrative side of the army, the officers of 
which receive a different kind of training. The 
General Staff says what is necessary. The admin- 
istrative side provides it as far as it can. And 
among the exclusive functions of the administra- 
tive side of the War Office is the recruiting of 
personnel by the Adjutant-General and the Mili- 
tary Secretary. It is true that the Director of 
Military Training, who supervises the training of 
the young officer when obtained, belongs to the 
General Staff. That is because his work is educa- 
tional. With obtaining the young officer it is only 
accidentally that he is at all concerned. 

When, therefore, even distinguished com- 
manders in the field express regret at the want of 
foresight of the British nation in not having pre- 
pared a much larger army before 1914, I would 
respectfully ask them how they imagine it could 
have been done. 

To raise a great corps of officers who have 
voluntarily selected the career of an officer as 
an exclusive and absorbing profession has been 
possible in Germany and in France. But it 
has only become possible there after generations 
of effort and under pressure of a long-standing 
tradition, extending from decade to decade, under 
which a nation, armed for the defense of its land 

194 



The Military Preparations 

frontiers, has expended its money and its spirit in 
creating such an officer caste. 

Now, the British nation has put its money and 
its fighting spirit primarily into its Navy and its 
oversea forces. Why? Because, just as the 
Continental tradition had its genesis in the 
necessity for instant readiness to defend land 
frontiers, so our tradition has had its genesis in 
the vital necessity of always commanding the sea. 

Possibly if, just after the war of 1870, we had 
endeavored to enter on a new tradition, and to 
develop a great army, we might have succeeded in 
doing so. With forty years' time devoted to the 
task and a very large expenditure we might con- 
ceivably have succeeded. But I think that had 
we done so we should have been very foolish. Our 
navy would inevitably have been diminished and 
deteriorated. You can not ride two horses at once, 
and no more can you possess in their integrity two 
great conflicting military traditions. . 

But what I am saying does not rest on my 
own conclusions alone. In the year 1912 the then 
Chief of the General Staff told me that he and 
the General Staff would like to investigate, as a 
purely military problem, the question whether we 
could or could not raise a great army. I thought 
this a reasonable inquiry and sanctioned and found 

195 



Before the War 

money for it, only stipulating that they should 
consult with the Administrative Staffs when 
assembling the materials for the investigation. 
The outcome was embodied in a report made to 
me by Lord Nicholson, himself a soldier who had 
a strong desire for compulsory service and a large 
army. He reported, as the result of a prolonged 
and careful investigation, that, alike as regarded 
officers and as regarded buildings and equipment, 
the conclusion of the General Staff was that it 
would be in a high degree unwise to try, during 
a period of unrest on the Continent, to commence 
a new military system. It could not be built up 
excepting after much unavoidable delay. We 
might at once experience a falling off in voluntary 
recruiting, and so become seriously weaker before 
we had a chance of becoming stronger. And the 
temptation to a foreign General Staff to make an 
early end of what it might insist on interpreting 
as preparation for aggression on our part would be 
too strong to be risked. What we should get 
might prove to be a mob in place of an army. I 
quite agreed, and not the less because it was highly 
improbable that the country would have looked at 
anything of the sort. 

What we actually could produce in the form 
of an army had to be estimated, not as if we were 

196 



The Military Preparations 

standing alone, but as being an adjunct to what 
was possessed by France and Russia. They had 
large armies and small navies. We had a large 
navy and a small army. When these were con- 
sidered in conjunction, I do not think that the hope 
of some of our best military authorities, that an 
aggressive attempt by the Central Powers could 
be made abortive, was an over-sanguine one. 

Much of what we did owe for the excellence 
of the Expeditionary Force, such as it was in point 
of size, and much of what we have since owed 
for the excellence of the great armies that we 
subsequently raised, was due to the unbroken work 
of the fine Administrative Staff, developed in those 
days, to which I have already referred. I often 
regret that when the nation gave its thanks 
through Parliament to the army, the splendid 
contribution made by those who prepared the 
administrative services was not adequately recog- 
nized. But this arose from the old British tradi- 
tion under which fighting and administration were 
not distinguished as being quite separate and yet 
equally essential for fighting. The public had not 
got into its head the reality of the process of 
defining the two different functions with precision, 
and of confiding them to different sets of officers 
differently trained. 

197 



Before the War 

The principle was a novel one in the army itself, 
and why one set of officers should be trained at the 
Staff College and another at the London School 
of Economics was not a question the answer to 
which was quite familiar, even to all soldiers. 

It is, I think, certain that for purely military 
reasons, even if, in view of political (including 
diplomatic) difficulties any party in the State had 
felt itself able to undertake the task of raising 
a great army under compulsory service, and to set 
itself to accomplish it, say, within the ten years 
before the war, the fulfilment of the undertaking 
could not have been accomplished, and failure in 
it would have made us much weaker than we were 
when the war broke out. The only course really 
open was to make use of the existing voluntary 
system, and bring its organization for war up to 
the modern requirements, of which they were in 
1906 far short. It is true that the voluntary sys- 
tem could not give us a substantially larger army, 
or more than a better one in point of quality. The 
stream of voluntary recruits was limited. When 
the 156 battalions of the line which existed on 
paper in 1906 were in that year nominally reduced 
to 148, there was no real reduction, altho some 
money was saved which was required for some 
other essential military purposes. For the remain- 

198 



The Military Preparations 

ing battalions were short of their proper strength, 
and it took all the recruits set free by the so-called 
reductions to bring the 148 — some of which were 
badly short of officers and men alike — to the proper 
establishment required for the six new divisions of 
the Expeditionary Force. 

I remember well the then Adjutant-General, 
Sir Charles Douglas, one of the ablest men of 
business who ever filled that position in this 
country, informing me at that time that he could 
not raise a single further division to be added to 
the six at home. 

But if the voluntary system had disadvantages, 
it also presented us with advantages. The pro- 
fessional and therefore voluntary nature of our 
army, which, because it was professional, was 
always ready for sending overseas on expeditions, 
was in reality made necessary by our position as 
the island center of a great and scattered Empire. 
We had increased that Empire enormously by the 
possession of a voluntarily serving army. Whether 
this vast increase of the Empire has been always 
defensible I am not discussing. What I am saying 
is that we owe the actual increases largely to this, 
that we were the only Power in the world that 
was ready to step in at short notice and occupy 
vacant territory. We always had a much larger 

199 



Before the War 

Expeditionary Force available for this special 
purpose than Germany or any other country. 
That has been our tradition, as contrasted with 
the tradition of other nations who have been 
limited in this kind of capacity by the necessity 
of putting their military forces on a compulsory 
basis and keeping them at home for the protection 
of their land frontiers. Ours was the method in 
which we had been schooled by experience. 

It is for such reasons as I have now submitted 
that I am wholly unable to assent to the suggestion 
that we did not look ahead, or considered within 
the years just before the war whether we were 
preparing to make the sort of contribution that 
our own interests and our friendships alike 
required. Sea power was for us then, as always 
before in our history, the dominant element in 
military policy. I have little doubt that we made 
mistakes over details. That is inherent in human 
and therefore finite effort. But I believe that 
we did in the main the best we could for the fulfil- 
ment of our only purpose, which was to preserve 
the peace of the world and avoid contributing to 
its disturbance, and also to prepare to defend our- 
selves and our friends against aggression. Talk 
to the public we could not, for it would have 
hindered and not helped us to do so. A "pre- 

200 



The Military Preparations 

ventive war," which the Entente Powers would 
not have been so ready to meet as they became 
later on, might well have been the result. 
Rhetorical declarations on platforms would have 
been wholly out of place. But we could think, 
and to the best of such abilities as we and our ex- 
pert advisers possessed, we did try to think. 

A curious legend which had its origin in Berlin, 
in October, 1914, has obtained such currency that 
it is worth while to make an end of it. The legend 
is that the British Military Attache at Brussels, 
the late General Barnardiston, had informed the 
Chief of the Belgian General Staff of secret plans, 
prepared at the War Office in London, to invade 
Belgium, and if necessary to violate her neutrality, 
in order to make an expedition, the purpose of 
which was to attack Germany through that 
country. The story appears to have emanated 
from Baron Greindl, who was the Belgian Minister 
at Berlin in 1911. He had been completely mis- 
informed, no doubt in that capital, and there is 
no truth whatever in what he had been told about 
what he called the "perfidious and naif revela- 
tions" of the British Military Attache at Brussels. 
Him the story represents as having said that his 
Minister (by whom I presume myself, as the then 
Secretary of State for War, to have been intended) 

201 



Before the War 

and the British General Staff were the only per- 
sons in the secret. I have to observe, in the first 
place, that I never during my tenure of office, 
either suggested any such plan, or heard of anyone 
else suggesting it. When the story was brought 
to my knowledge, which was not until November, 
1914, I inquired at once of General Barnardiston 
and of his successor, Colonel Bridges, whether 
there was any foundation for it. The reply from 
each of these distinguished officers was that there 
was none. 

We were among the guarantors of Belgian 
neutrality, and it was of course conceivable that, 
if she called on us to do so, we might have had 
to defend her. It would be part of the duty of 
our Military Attache to remember this, and, if 
opportunity offered, to ascertain in informal con- 
versation the view of the Belgian General Staff 
as to what form of help they would be likely to 
ask us for. This he doubtless did, and indeed it 
appears from what the Chief of the Belgian 
General Staff wrote to the Belgian War Minister 
that the former had discussed the contingency of 
Belgium desiring our help with General Barnardis- 
ton, and had done so gladly. But even so the 
conversation must have been very informal, for 
in the account of it by the Chief of the Belgian 

202 



The Military Preparations 

General Staff there are errors about the com- 
position of the possible British Force which in- 
dicate that either he took no notes, or else that 
Colonel Barnardiston had not thought it an occa- 
sion which required him to obtain details from 
London. At all events, such talk as there was ap- 
pears to have had relation only to what we ought 
to do, if requested by Belgium to help, in case of 
her being invaded by another Power. 

The documents will be found in the volume 
of Collected Diplomatic Documents relating to 
the outbreak of the war, presented to Parliament 
in May, 1915 (Cd. 7860). This volume includes 
a vigorous denial by Sir Edward Grey of the 
insinuation. 



203 



EPILOG 



CHAPTER V 

EPILOG 

The great war is over, and the Powers of the 
West have conquered. In the earlier pages I 
have given my own view of why they won in the 
tremendous struggle that now belongs to history. 
They had on their side moral forces which were 
lacking to their adversaries. 

Germany went into the war with a conviction 
that had been carefully instilled into her people. 
It was that she was being ringed round with the 
intention that she should be crushed, and that 
presently it would be too late for her to deliver 
herself. The lesson so taught to her was not a 
true one. She might easily have obtained guaran- 
tees of peace which ought to have satisfied her, 
without undertaking a risk which in the end 
was to prove disastrous. No one here wanted 
to ruin her, no one who counted seriously in this 
country. And if we did not want to, no more 
in reality did France or Russia. She brought her 
fate on her head by the unwisdom of her methods. 
But her people hardly desired the dangers of 

207 



Before the War 

unnecessary war, and her rulers dared not have 
ventured these dangers had they not first of all 
preached a wrong doctrine to those over whom 
they ruled. They had their way in the end, and 
disaster to sixty-eight millions of Germans was the 
consequence. The calculations of their chiefs were 
bad from the beginning. It is almost certain that 
the best and most eminent among even these really 
desired peace. They blundered in method. It was 
not by continually flashing the saber that peace was 
to be secured. 

It is scarcely likely that the conditions under 
which this war became possible will recur. It is 
more than unlikely that they will recur in our time. 
But it is none the less worth while to consider how 
the unlikelihood can be made to approach most 
nearly to a certainty. 

Not, I think, by causing the millions of German- 
speaking people to feel that they are in chains 
without possibility of freedom. More certainly, 
surely, by leading them to the faith that if they will 
play a part in the great world effort for permanent 
peace and for reconstruction they will be welcomed 
to the brotherhood of nations. The individual 
German citizen is more like the individual Anglo- 
Saxon than he is different from him. The same 
hopes and the same fears animate him, and he is 

208 



Epilog 

sober and industrious quite as much as we are. He 
has similar problems and similar interests. 

Time must pass before the angry feeling that 
a great struggle produces can die down. But there 
are already indications that this feeling is not as 
intense with us as it was even a short time ago. 
Germany made a colossal and unjustifiable blunder. 
She is responsible for the action of her late 
Government. We think so, and we are not likely 
to change our opinion on this point. The grief of 
our people over their dead, over the lives that were 
laid down for the nation from the highest kind of 
inspiration, will keep the public mind fixed on this 
conclusion. And so will the waste and misery to 
the whole world which an unnecessary war has 
brought in its train. But presently we shall ask 
ourselves, in moments of reflection, whether this 
ought to be our final word, and also, perhaps, 
whether some want of care on our own part, and 
certain deficiencies of which we are now more 
conscious than we used to be, may not have had 
something to do with the failure of other people 
to divine our real mood and intentions. I am 
not sure that in days that are to come we shall 
give ourselves the whole benefit of the doubt. 
However this may be, we are in no case a vindictive 
people. 

209 



Before the War 

But in any view something serious is at stake. 
It will be a bad thing for us, and it will be a bad 
thing for the world, if the people of the vanquished 
nations are left to feel that they have no hope of 
being restored to decent conditions of existence. 
At present despair is threatening them. Their 
estimate is that the crushing burden of the terms 
of peace, if carried out to their full possibilities, 
bars them from the prospect of a better future. 
Their only way of deliverance may well come to 
seem to them to lie in the grouping of the dis- 
contented nationalities, and the faith that by this 
means, at some time which may come hereafter, 
a new balance of power may begin to be set up. 

Now this is not a good prospect, and the sooner 
we succeed in softening the sense of real hardship 
out of which it arises the better. Germany and 
Austria must pay the penalty they have incurred 
before the tribunal of international justice. But 
that penalty ought to be tempered by something 
that depends on even more than mercy. It is 
intended to be inflicted for the good of the world, 
and if it assumes a form which threatens the future 
safety of the world it is not wise to press it to its 
extreme consequences. We have to work toward 
a better state of things than that which is promised 
to-day. We have never hitherto kept up old 

210 



Epilog 

animosities unduly long, and that has been one 
of the secrets of our strength in the world. The 
lessons of history point to the expediency of 
trying to heal instead of to keep open the 
wound which exists. Those who know the growth 
in the past of literature, of music, of science, 
of philosophy, of industry and of commerce, 
do not wish the German people to die out. It 
is only the ignorant that can desire this, and, 
hitherto in the course of our history, the ignorant 
have neither proved to be safe guides nor have 
they prevailed. To-day, as before, we must think 
of generations other than our own if we would 
preserve our strength. 

I hope that a time is near in which we shall no 
longer proclaim old grievances, but instead cease 
to dwell on the past in this case, just as we have 
ceased in the cases of the French, the Spanish, the 
Russians, and the Boers. It is best in every way 
that it should come to be so. 

It is not with any hope that these pages will 
satisfy the extremists of to-day that they have 
been written. They are intended for those who 
try to be dispassionate, and for them only, as 
a contribution to a vast heap of material that is 
being gathered together for consideration. It 
is well that those who were in any way directly 

211 



Before the War 

connected with the story to which they relate 
should place on record what they saw. But 
the whole story in its fulness is beyond the knowl- 
edge of anyone of our time. The history of the 
world is, as has been said, the judgment of the 
world. It is therefore only after an interval that 
it can be sufficiently written. The ultimate and 
real origin of this war, the greatest humanity has 
ever had to endure, was a set of colossal suspicions 
of each other by the nations concerned. I do not 
mean that none of them were in the right or that 
some of them were not deeply in the wrong. What 
I do mean is that if there had been insight sufficient 
all round the nations concerned would not have mis- 
interpreted each other. 

To us it looks as tho Germany had been 
inspired throughout by a bad tradition, a spirit 
older than even the days of Frederick the Great. 
Had she been wise we think that she would have 
changed her national policy after Bismarck had 
brought it to unexampled success in things mate- 
rial. There are not wanting indications that he 
himself had the sense of the necessity of great 
caution in pursuing this policy farther, and felt 
that it could not be safely continued without modi- 
fication. It was no policy that was safe for any 
but the strongest and sanest of minds, and even 

212 



Epilog 

for those it had ceased to be safe. The potential 
resistance to it was becoming too serious. 

But we do not need to doubt that there were 
many in Germany itself who saw this and did not 
desire to rely merely on blood and iron. The men 
and women in every country resemble those in 
other countries more than they differ from them. 
Germany was no exception to the rule. It is a 
great mistake to judge her as she was merely 
from a few newspapers and by the reports from 
Berlin of their special correspondents. Sixty-eight 
millions of people could not be estimated in their 
opinions by the attitude of a handful, however 
eminent and prominent, in the home of "Real 
politik" It is, of course, true that the Germans 
were taught to believe that they were a very great 
nation which had not got its full share of the good 
things of this world, a share of which they were 
more worthy and for which they were better 
organized than any other. But it is also true that 
we here thought that we ourselves were entitled to 
a great deal to which other people did not admit our 
moral title. It was not only Germany that was 
lacking in imagination. No doubt many Germans 
had the idea that we wished to hem them in and 
that we did not like them. Our failure to make 
ourselves understood left them not without reason 

213 



Before the War 

for this belief. But dislike of Germany was not the 
attitude of the great mass of sober and God-fearing 
Englishmen, and I do not believe that the counter- 
attitude was that of the bulk of sober and God- 
fearing Germans. They and we alike mutually 
misjudged each other from what was written in 
newspapers and said in speeches by people who 
were not responsible exponents of opinion, and 
neither nation took sufficient trouble to make clear 
that what was thus written and said was not suffi- 
cient material on which to judge it. It is very 
difficult to diagnose general opinion in a foreign 
nation, and one of the reasons of the difficulty is 
that people at home do not pay sufficient attention 
to the fact that their unfriendly utterances about 
their neighbors are likely to receive more publicity 
and attention than the utterances that are friendly. 
It makes little difference that the latter may greatly 
preponderate in number. They are read in the 
main only in the country in which they are made. 
Neither Germans nor Englishmen were careful 
before the war always to be pleasant to each other, 
and the same used to be true of Frenchmen and 
Englishmen. But just as we are coming to 
understand why and how France and England 
misinterpreted each other systematically a century 
and a half ago, so we may yet learn how we came to 

214 



Epilog 

present, more than a hundred years later, difficul- 
ties to the Germans not wholly unlike those which 
they presented to us. No mere record of the dry 
facts will be enough to render this intelligible in its 
full significance. The historian who is to carry 
conviction must do more than present photographs. 
He must create a picture inspired by his own study 
and from the depth of his own mind, and presented 
in its real proportions with its proper lights and 
shadows, as a true artist alone can present it. 
Browning has told us something worth remember- 
ing. It is at the end of "The Ring and the 
Book": 

Art may tell a truth 
Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought, 
Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word. 
So may you paint your picture, twice show truth, 
Beyond mere imagery on the wall, — 
So, note by note, bring music from your mind, 
Deeper than ever e'en Beethoven dived, — 
So write a book shall mean beyond the facts, 
Suffice the eye and save the soul beside. 

The truth in its fulness and completeness can 
not be compassed in any single narrative of events. 
It is, of course, the case that history depends for 
its value on scientific accuracy, but that is not the 
only kind of truth on which it depends. No man, 
even the most careful and exacting, can rely on 

215 



Before the War 

having the whole of the materials before his eye, and 
if he had them there they would not only be pre- 
sented in tints depending on his outlook, but would 
be too vast to admit of his using more than isolated 
fragments to work into his picture of the whole. 
Selection is a necessity, and when to the fact that 
there must be selection there is added the other 
fact that every historian has his personal equation, 
the notion of a history constructed by a single man 
on the methods of the physicist is a delusion. The 
best that the great historian can do is to present the 
details in the light of the spirit of the period of 
which he is writing, and in order that he may 
present his narrative aright, as his mind has recon- 
structed it, he must estimate his details in the order 
in importance that was actually theirs. Now for 
this the balance and the measuring rod do not 
suffice. Quality counts as much as does quantity 
in determining importance. What is merely inert 
and mechanical is the subject neither of the artist 
nor the historian. It is, of course, necessary that by 
close and exact research the materials should first 
of all be collected and assembled. But that is only 
the first step, and it always has to be followed by a 
process of grouping and fashioning. The result 
may have to be the leaving out (or the leaving over 
for presentation by other artists) of aspects which 

216 



Epilog 

are not dealt with. We see this when we compare 
even the best portraits. They do not wholly agree ; 
it is enough if they correspond. For portraits may 
vary in expression and yet each may be true. The 
characteristic of what is alive and is intelligent and 
spiritual is that it may have many expressions, 
every one of which really harmonizes with every 
other. It is because they can bring out expression 
in this fashion that we continue to set high store on 
the work of a Gibbon or a Mommsen. 

The moral of this is twofold. We must, to 
begin with, be content for the present to remain 
in the stage at which all that can be done is to 
collect and assemble facts and personal impres- 
sions with as great care as we can. The whole 
truth we can not bring out or estimate until the 
later period, altho we may be sure enough of what 
we have before us to make us feel capable of doing 
justice of a rough kind, so far as necessary action 
is concerned. 

And there is yet another deduction to be 
drawn. It is at all events possible that the wider 
view of a generation later than this may be one in 
which Germany will be judged more gently than 
the Allies can judge her to-day. We do not now 
look on the French Revolution as our forefathers 
looked on it. We see, because recent historians 

217 



Before the War 

have impressed it on us, that it was a violent up- 
rising against, not Louis XVI., but a Louis XIV. 
What France really made her great Revolution 
to bring about was the establishment of a Con- 
stitution. Horrible deeds were perpetrated in 
the name of Liberty, but it was not due to 
any horrible national spirit that they were perpe- 
trated. France was responsible no doubt for the 
deeds of the men who acted in her name. But she 
could hardly have controlled them even had she 
passionately desired to do so. And she did not 
passionately desire to do so because, however little 
the mass of the people outside Paris may have 
wished to massacre the adherents of the old 
regime, the people as a whole welcomed deliverance 
from calamity, even at the price of violent action. 

We judge the French nation wholly differently 
to-day from the way we judged it then, and it 
judges us differently. Yet it would have been well 
had we not in the end of the eighteenth century 
taken an exaggerated view of the French state of 
mind. We now realize that even so great a man 
as Burke mistook a fragment for the whole. Much 
blood and treasure might have been spared, and 
Xapoleon might never have come into existence, 
had we and others been less hasty. 

It is therefore a good thing to keep before us 
218 



Epilog 

that it is at least possible that the verdict of man- 
kind will be hereafter that when the victory was 
theirs the Allies judged the people of Germany in 
a hurry and reflected this judgment in the spirit in 
which certain of the terms of peace were declared. 
The war had its proximate origin in the Near East, 
It arose out of a supposed menace to Teuton by 
Slav. The Slavs were not easy people to deal with, 
and the Teutons were not easy people either. It 
was easy to drift into war. It may well prove true 
that no one really desired this, and that it was 
miscalculation about the likelihood of securing 
peace by a determined attitude that led to 
disaster. It is certain that the German Govern- 
ment was deeply responsible for the conse- 
quences. In the face of its traditional policy 
and of utterances that came from Berlin the 
members of that Government can not plead a 
mere blunder. None the less, a great deal may 
have been due to sheer ineptitude in estimating 
human nature. How much this was so, or how 
much an immoral tradition had its natural re- 
sults, we can not as yet fully tell, for we have not 
the whole of the records before us. No one disputes 
that we were bound to impose heavy terms on the 
Central Powers. The Allies have won the war and 
they were entitled to reparation. This the Germans 

219 



Before the War 

do not appear to controvert. They are a people 
with whom logic is held in high esteem. But we 
have to do something more than define the mere 
consequences of victory. We have also to make 
plain on what footing we shall be willing to live 
with the German nation in days that lie ahead. 
And here some enlargement of the spirit seems to 
be desirable in our own interests. We do not 
want to fall again into the mistake that Burke 
made. 

The spirit is at least as important as the letter 
in the doctrine of a League of Nations. Such a 
League has for its main purpose the supersession of 
the old principle of balancing the Powers. In the 
absence of a League of Nations, or — what is the 
same thing in a less organized form — of an entente 
or concert of Powers so general that none are left 
shut out from it, the principle of balancing may 
have to be relied on. I believe this to have 
been unavoidable when the Entente between 
France, Russia and Great Britain was found to 
be required for safety if the tendency to dominate 
of the Triple Alliance was to be held in check. 
But in that case, and probably in every other 
case, reliance on the principle could only be 
admissible for self-protection and never for the 
mere exhibition of the power of the sword. If 

220 



Epilog 

the principle is resorted to with the latter object 
the group that is suspected of aggressive intentions 
will by degrees find itself confronted with another 
group of nations that have huddled together for 
self -protection and may become very strong just 
because they have a moral justification for their 
action. It was this that happened before the war 
which broke out in 1914, and it was the state of 
tension which ensued that led up to that war. Had 
there been no counter-grouping to that of the 
Central Powers there would probably have been 
war all the same, but with this difference, that 
defeat and not victory would have been the lot of 
the Entente Powers. 

Now the German-speaking peoples in the world 
amount to an enormous number, at least to a 
hundred millions if those outside Germany and 
Austria, and in the New World, as well as the Old, 
are taken into account. It may be difficult for 
them to organize themselves for war, but it will 
be less difficult for them to develop a common spirit 
which may penetrate all over the world. It is just 
this development that statesmen ought to watch 
carefully, for, given an interval long enough, it is 
impossible to predict what influence these hundred 
millions of people may not acquire and come to 
exercise. We do not want to have a prolonged 

221 



Before the War 

period of growing anxiety and unrest, such as 
obtained in our relations with the French, notwith- 
standing the peace established by the Treaty of 
Vienna. Of the anxiety and unrest which were 
ours for more than one generation, the history of 
the Channel fortifications, of the Volunteer force 
and of several other great and often costly institu- 
tions, bears witness. Let us therefore take thought 
while there is time to do so. We do not wish to see 
repeated anything analogous to our former experi- 
ence. The one thing that can avert it is the spirit 
in which a League of Nations has been brought 
to birth. That spirit alone can preclude the gradual 
nascence of desire to call into existence a new 
balance of power. It is not enough to tell Germany 
and Austria that if they behave well they will be 
admitted to the League of Nations. What really 
matters is the feeling and manner in which the 
invitation is given, and an obvious sincerity in 
the desire that they should work with us as equals 
in a common endeavor to make the best of a world 
which contains us both. One is quite conscious of 
the difficulties that must attend the attempt to 
approach the question in the frame of mind that is 
requisite. We may have to discipline ourselves 
considerably. But the people of this country are 
capable of reflection, and so are the people of the 

222 



Epilog 

American Continent. The problem to be solved 
is one that presses on our great Allies in the United 
States, where the German-speaking population is 
very large, quite as much as it does on us. France 
and Belgium have more to forgive, and France has 
a hard past from which to avert her eyes. But she 
is a country of great intelligence, and it is for the 
sake of everybody, and not merely in the interest 
of our recent enemies, that enlargement of the 
spirit is requisite. 

How the present situation is to be softened, how 
the people of the Central Powers are to be brought 
to feel that they are not to remain divided from us 
by an impassable gulf, this is not the occasion to 
suggest. It is enough to repeat that the question is 
not one simply of the letter of a treaty but is one of 
the spirit in which it is made. Conditions change in 
this world with a rapidity that is often startling. 
The fashion of the day passes before we know that 
what is novel and was unexpected has come upon 
us. The foundations of a peace that is to be 
enduring must therefore be sought in what is 
highest and most abiding in human nature. 



223 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Agadie incident, the, 68 
Algeciras Conference, the, 69, 

114 
Alsace-Lorraine, question of, 114 

the Kaiser on, 52, S3 
America, Tschirsky on, 60 
Anglo-French Entente, Biilow 
on, 56 
Tschirsky, 59 

views of German Emperor on, 
52 
Armaments, difficulty of ques- 
tion of, 21 
Germany's, 94, 161 
Army, British, advantages of 
voluntary system in, 199 
question of compulsory service, 
198 
Asquith, Mr., consulted by Sir 
Edward Grey, 45 
Premier and War Secretary, 

50 
presides at Imperial Defense 
Committee, 182 
Austria annexes Bosnia and 
Herzegovina, 70, 113 
ultimatum to Serbia, 133 



Bagdad Railway, the, William 

II. and, 63 et seq. 
Balance of power, and the 

League of Nations, 222 
principle of, 20, 22, 119 
Balfour, A. J., and Imperial 

Defense, 184 



Ballin, Herr, and Tirpitz, 144 
Barnardiston, General, an un- 
founded charge against, 201 
Berchtold, Count, and the ulti- 
matum to Serbia, 153 
Berlin, a curious legend orig- 
inating in, 201 

and the Bagdad Railway 
question, 66 

author's visit to, 37 
Bethmann-Hollweg, and the Aga- 

dir crisis, 69, 71 

at Potsdam conference, 151 

author's interview with, and 
the formula of neutrality, 71, 
73, 78, 79, 124 

desires preservation of peace, 
161 

his accusation against Entente 
Powers, 103 

informed of Austrian ultima- 
tum, 153 

letter to author after the Mon- 
treal address, 93 

loyalty to the Kaiser, 114 

succeeds Prince Biilow as Chan- 
cellor, 112 
Bismarck, Countess Wilhelm, 146 
Bismarck, Prince, a dictum of, 
56 

and Britain's indefinite policy, 
17 

and the inevitability of war, 23 

and the military party in Ger- 
many, 89 

and Tirpitz, 145-48 



22J 



Index 



Bismarck, Prince, denounces ab- 
rogation of Reinsurance 
Treaty, 146 
his affection for Emperor 

Frederick, 148 
his hatred of "prestige poli- 
tics," 120 
Reinsurance Treaty with Rus- 
sia, 125 
Boer War, the, attitude of the 

Kaiser during, 115 
Bosnia, annexation of, 70, 113 
Botha, General, co-operates in 

military preparations, 188 
Bridges, Colonel, British Mili- 
tary Attache at Brussels, 
202 
Britain's command of the sea, 

195 
British Army, the reorganization 

of, 47 
British Expeditionary Force, the, 
mobilization of, 50 
organization of, 178 
unrecognized work of, 197 
British Government, the, para- 
mount duty of, 18 
British Navy, a War Staff intro- 
duced into, 139, 181 (See also 
Navy, British) 
Biilow, Prince von, author's meet- 
ing with, 38 
on the Anglo-French Entente, 

56 
opposes Bagdad Railway pro- 
posal, 67 
succeeded by Bethmann-Holl- 
weg as Chancellor, 112 



Cambon, M. Jules, and relations 
between France and Ger- 
many, 113 
informed of Berlin "conversa- 
tions," 78 



Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 
and Imperial Defense, 182, 
184 
at Marienbad, 38 

Caprivi and the organization of 
German Navy, 138 
and the Reinsurance Treaty, 
126, 127 

Cassel, Sir Ernest, visits Berlin, 
70 (and note) 

Central Powers, the, preparations 
for war, 20 
their responsibility for the 
world war, 22 

Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J., Tariff 
Reform policy of, 54 

Churchill, Winston, naval policy 
of, 87, 181 

Committee of Imperial Defense, 
the, and its functions, 158, 
159, 177, 182 

Compulsory service, author's 
views on, 198 

Cowans, Sir John, and the mil- 
itary preparations, 188 

Crewe, Lord, attends meetings of 
Committee of Imperial De- 
fense, 182 

Curzon, Lord, meets German Em- 
peror, 68 

Czernin, Count, on William II., 
170 



D'Aerenthal, Count, diplomatic 
victory of, 113 

Dawson, Harbutt, "German Em- 
pire" of, 120 

Democracy and war, 27 
vindicated by the war, 108 
(See also Social Democracy) 

Diplomacy before the war, 35 et 
seq. 

Disarmament, German objections 
to, 55, 60 



228 



Index 



Donop, Sir Stanley von, Master- 
General of the Ordnance, 
188 

Douglas, Sir Charles, and the vol- 
untary system, 199 



Education, author's activities 

for, 39 
Edward VII., King, at Marien- 
bad, 38 
"encirclement" policy of: Beth- 

mann-Hollweg on, 113 
entertains the German Em- 
peror, 62 
Einem, General von, at Windsor, 
62 
author's interview with, 38 
Ellison, Colonel, at Berlin, 38 
England, a War Staff for the 
Navy in, 139, 181 
commercial rivalry with Ger- 
many, 114 
conservation of sea power and 

what it implied, 20, 21 
efforts to preserve peace end 

in failure, 22 
her alleged plans to violate 

Belgian neutrality, 201 
propagandists for German 

military party in, 21 
reorganization of army in, 185 
voluntary military system of, 
and its advantages, 199 
(See also Great Britain) 
England's precautions against 
Germany's war designs, 168- 
69 
Englishmen, defects and failings 
"of, 28 

psychology of, 17 
Entente, the, England's entry 
into — and the alternative, 
118, 119, 162 
policy of, 106 



Ewart, General, and the Com- 
mittee of Imperial Defense, 
184 

Expeditionary Force (see Brit- 
ish Expeditionary Force) 

Falkeniiayk, von, commanded 
to Potsdam, 150, 151 

France, apprehensive of Ger- 
many's intentions, 44 
army of, 180 

Frankfurter Zeitung opposes 
Tirpitz's war objectives, 113 

Free Trade, Prince von Biilow's 
views on, 58 
William II. on, 54 

French Revolution, the, 217 

French, Sir John, and reorgani- 
zation of British Army, 48 

George V., King, entertains Ger- 
man Emperor, 67 
George, Lloyd, and the Agadir 
crisis, 70 
at meetings of Committee of 
Imperial Defense, 182 
German desire of commercial de- 
velopment, 55, 58, 60 
foreign policy: divided control 
of, 85 
Germans, psychology of, 40 
Germany, and the Agadir inci- 
dent, 68 
and the Hague Conference, 60 
attitude of, before the war, 101 

et seq. 
cause of her downfall, 167 
Chauvinist party in, 81 
commercial rivalry with Eng- 
land, 114 
decides upon war, 88 
defect of Imperial system in, 

109 
desire for commercial expan- 
sion, 103 



229 



Index 



Germany, Fleet Laws passed in 
the Reichstag, 142 

her responsibility for the 
world war, 90 

increases her armaments, 21, 
94, 161 

influence of General Staff, 41, 
107 

militarist party of, 39, 89, 108 

miscalculations at outbreak of 
war, 83, 159 

naval program of, 142, 156 

new Military Law passed, 136 

organization of her Navy, 138 

over-ambition of, 16 

peaceful penetration policy of, 
39, 41 

politics in: an anecdote of, 85 
(note) 

result of military spirit in, 15, 
22 

scaremongers in, 24 

shipbuilding program of, 74 

the new Fleet Law, 75, 79, 87, 
128 

the Press and Tirpitz, 143 

two inconsistent policies in, 
107 

why she entered the war, 207 
Goltz, von der, his "Nation in 

Arms," 180 
Goschen, Sir Edward, demands 

his passports, 44 
Gosse, Edmund, meets the Em- 
peror, 68 
Grant Duff, Colonel, 185 
Great Britain and Belgian neu- 
trality, 202 

ante-war policy of, 13, 17 

deficiencies in military organ- 
ization of, 46 

enters the war, 95 

her sea power before the war, 
19 

indefinite policy of, 17, 28, 30 



Great Britain, question of her 
preparedness for war, 18, 177 
the educational problem in, 
39 
Great War, the, and Germany's 
responsibility, 15 
causes of, 161 
Greindl, Baron, and a curious 

legend, 201 
Grey, Sir Edward (Lord Grey 
of Fallodon), an historical 
speech by, 44 
and the Bagdad Railway ques- 
tion, 64 
at meetings of Imperial De- 
fense Committee, 182 
Bethmann-Hollweg on, 113 
% denies an insinuation originat- 
ing in Berlin, 203 
his efforts for peace, 88, 154, 

155 
negotiates with Germany, 163 
presses Serbia to accept ulti- 
matum, 155 
proposes a conference, 154 
Grierson, General, and the Com- 
mittee of Imperial Defense, 
184 

Hague Conference, the, 55 

Germany's difficulty, 60 
Haig, Sir Douglas, and military 
preparations for war, 188 

and the reorganization of Brit- 
ish Army, 48 
Haldane, Lord, a luncheon to 
the German Emperor, 67 

a visit to the United States and 
Canada, 37 

addresses at Montreal and Ox- 
ford, 92, 145 

advocates improved system of 
education, 39 

and Expeditionary and Terri- 
torial Forces, 48, 50, 178 



230 



Index 



Haldane, Lord, and the Bagdad 
Railway question, 63 et seq. 

becomes Lord Chancellor, 37, 
87 

"conversations" at Berlin, 72, 
124 

criticizes Bethmann-Hollweg's 
book, 101 et seq. 

dines with the Chancellor, 77 

entertained by General Staff, 
41 

examines organization of Ger- 
man War Office, 38 

frank conversation with Wil- 
liam II., 52 et seq. 

lunches with Emperor and Em- 
press, 74 

on military preparations, 177 
et seq. 

post-war problems and how 
they should be met, 208 et seq. 

rebuts a statement by Tirpitz, 
164 

Secretary of State for War, 36 

studies in Germany, 36 

visits German Emperor, 37 

witnesses review of German 
troops, 51 
Hankey, Sir Maurice, his work 
recognized by Parliament, 185 
Harcourt, Lord, at Imperial De- 
fense Committee meetings, 
182 
Harnack, Professor, author's 

meeting with, 77 
Herzegovina, annexation of, 70, 

113 
Hindenburg, General von, au- 
thor's meeting with, 77 
Huguet, Colonel, interviewed by 
author, 45 

Imperial Defense Committee, the, 

158, 159, 177, 182 
Isvolsky, M., 113, 162 



Jagow, Herr von, and the ulti- 
matum to Serbia, 133 

Kiaochow (see Tsingtau) 
Kiderlen-Waechter, Herr von, a 
talk with, 77 
and the Agadir incident, 69 
Kitchener, Lord, meets tho Em- 
peror, 68 
personality of, 179 
Kitchener's Army, 50, 178 

Lansdowne, Lord, and the agree- 
ment with France, 21 

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, co-operates 
in military preparations, 188 

League of Nations, the, 220, 222 

Lucanus, von, snubbed by Bis- 
marck, 148 

Lyncker, von, commanded to 
Potsdam, 150, 151 

Lyttelton, Sir Neville, 188 

< 
MacDonald, Ramsay, lunches 

with German Emperor, 68 
Mahan, Admiral, his works stud- 
ied by Tirpitz, 141 
McKenna, Mr., and the Navy, 87 
Metternich, Count, and Bagdad 

Railway question, 66 
at Windsor, 62 
author's relations with, 57 
Miles, Sir Herbert, assists in 

military preparations, 188 
Military preparations, the, 177 et 

seq. 
Moltke, Count von, his scheme 

for rapid mobilization, 38 
Moltke, General von, a chat with, 

42 
present at meeting of Bismarck 

and Kaiser, 148 
Morley, Lord, at luncheon to the 

Emperor, 68 



23I 



Index 



Morley, Lord, attends meetings 
of Committee of Imperial 
Defense, 182 

Morocco difficulty, the, 115 
France's request to England, 44 

Moulton, Lord, meets German 
Emperor, 68 

National philosophy, German, 

30 
Navy, British, mobilization of, 50 
sea power the dominant ele- 
ment in military policy, 200 
why strengthened and in- 
creased, 87, 129, 181 
Navy, German, Biilow on, 57 

William II. and, 54 
Nicholson, Lord, and a new mil- 
itary system, 196 
chief of General Staff, 188 

Officers' Training Corps, organ- 
ization of, 192 

Ottley, Admiral Sir Charles, sec- 
retary of Committee of Im- 
perial Defense, 185 

Panther sent to Agadir, 68 
Peace terms, the, burden of, 210 
Post-war problems, and how 

they should be met, 208 
Potsdam, a reported Crown 
Council at, and Tirpitz's ver- 
sion of, 131, 149 

Reinsurance Treaty of 1884, 126, 

146 
Repington, Col. A'Court, 191 
Reventlow, Count, 38 (note) 
Richter opposes Tirpitz on the 

naval program, 142 
Russia, army of, 180 
her hostility to Austria, 113 
not wishful for war, 162 
Russo-Japanese War, William 
II. and, 116 



Sargent, J. S., lunches with the 
Emperor, 68 

Schoen, Baron von, accompanies 
William II. to England, 62 
and the Bagdad Railway ques- 
tion, 65 

Serbia as "provocative neighbor," 
23 
ultimatum to, 133 

Skiernevice {see Reinsurance 
Treaty) 

Social Democracy, and militar- 
ism, 108 
in Germany, 84, 144 

Special Reserve, the, organiza- 
tion of, 178 

Spender, J. A., meets the Em- 
peror, 68 

Stosch, and the German Navy, 
138 

Tangier, William II. at, 53, 115 
Tariff Reform, the Kaiser on, 55 
Teaching universities, author and, 

39 
Technical colleges in England, 

40 
Territorial Force, the, its part in 
the world war, 49 
mobilization of, 50 
organization of, 48, 178 
Tirpitz, Admiral von, an admis- 
sion by, 138 
an interview with, 74 
and Bethmann-Hollweg's pol- 
icy, 141 
criticizes author, 160 
demands a definite policy for 

war, 143 
his "Erinnerungen" discussed, 

137 et seq. 
his influence in Germany, 82 
informed of Austria's demands 

to Serbia, 153 
mentality of, 137 



232 



Index 



Tirpitz, Admiral von, outstand- 
ing thesis of his book, 141 
tribute to British sea power, 

161 
visits Bismarck, 145, 148 
Trench warfare, unpreparedness 

for, 191 
Tschirsky, Herr von, and the ul- 
timatum to Serbia, 153 
author's interview with, 38 
on Anglo-French Entente, 59 
on the English Press, 61 
Tsingtau as German naval base, 

140 
Two-Power standard, discussed 
with German Emperor and 
Prince Biilow, 54, 57 
Tirpitz and, 76 

United States {see America) 

Voluntary system, the, advan- 
tages of, 199 

William II., Emperor, an om- 
inous admission by, 43 
and the Agadir crisis, 69, 70 
and the Anglo-French Entente, 

52 
Bismarck's message to, 148 
consults Bethmann-Hollweg and 

Zimmermann, 132 
Count Czernin on, 170 



William II., Emperor, desires 
exchange of views between 
Berlin and London, 70, 71 

Emperor of Austria's letter to, 
and memorandum on policy, 
131 

frank speech with author, 52 et 
seq. 

his proposal on Bagdad Rail- 
way question, 66 

his reception in London, 68 

incautious speeches of, 69, 117, 
161 

pays surprise visit to Bis- 
marck, 148 

promises support to Austria, 
150 

reads a poem to author, 165 

reviews his troops, 51 

Tirpitz and, 142 

visits King Edward and King 
George, 62, 67 
Wilson, Admiral Sir Arthur, 

meets the Emperor, 68 
Wilson, General, and the Com- 
mittee of Imperial Defense, 
184 
Windsor, the German Emperor's 
visit to, 62 

Zimmermann, Herr, at Potsdam 
conference, 151 
meets author, 77 



233 



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